THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  ILLINOIS 

LIBRARY 

cop.  "2. 


UBint  iisTAiiiMt  una 


HULL- HOUSE 
MAPS     AND      PAPERS 


A  PRESENTATION  OF  NATIONALITIES  AND 
WAGES   IN  A  CONGESTED  DISTRICT  OF  CHICAGO, 

TOGETHER 

WITH  COMMENTS  AND  ESSAYS  OX  PROBLEMS 

GROWING  OUT  OF  THE  SOCIAL 

CONDITIONS 


BY 

RESIDENTS  OF  HULL-HOUSE 

A  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT 
At  335  South  Halsted  Street,   Chicago,  III. 


New  York  :  46  East  Fourteenth  Street 

THO>L\S    Y.    CROWELL    &    CO. 

Boston:  100  Purchase  Street 


«*f 


Copyright,  1S05, 
By  Thomas  Y.  Ckowell  &  Company. 


ttrogeaphy  15y  c.  j.  peters  &  son, 
Boston. 


TAliLE    OF    CONTEXTS. 


rKKFATUllY    XOTK V 

lilj  fJANK  AnHAMS. 

I.     Map  Xotks  and  Commkxts 3 

/>'»/   A<iXKS   SlNCl.AIU   HoI.lllJOOK. 

II.     TiiK  Swkatino-System 27 

liy  Klokexck  Kellky. 

III.  WaOE-EaHMNG    (lIII.DIiKN 49 

By  Flokexck  Kkllkv  and  Alzixa  P.  Stevens. 

IV.  Keceipts  and  Expenditures  of  Cloakmakers 

i.\  Chicago 79 

liy  I. s  A  IS  EL  Eaton. 

\    T.     The  Ciiicaco  Ghetto 91 

ISy   CUAKLK.S    ZEI'HLIN. 

VI.     The  liOHEMiAX  People  in  Chicago 115 

lUj  ,Io.SEFA   HUJIPAL  ZEM.VN. 

VII.       PiK.MAKKS  upon  THE  ITALIAN  CoLONY  IN  CHICAGO      131 
JSy  Ales.Sandko  Mastro-Valerui. 

V-HI.     The  Cook  County  Charities 143 

Jly  -JiLiA  C.  Laturcji'. 

IX.     Art  and  Labor 165 

lUj    Kl.I.EN    (iATF.S    STAUII. 

X.     The  Settkement  as  a  Factor  in  the  Labor 

Movement 183 

Ily  .Jane  Auda.ms. 

Appendix.     IIull-IIouse  :  A  Social  Settlement  .     .     207 


1 700 1 1 


PREFATORY    NOTE. 


The  word  "  settlement "  is  fast  becoming  familiar 
to  the  American  public,  although  the  tirst  settlement, 
Toynbee  Hall,  in  East  London,  was  established  so  late 
as  1885.  Canon  Barnett,  the  founder,  urged  as  the 
primal  ideal  that  a  group  of  University  men  should 
reside  in  the  poorer  quarter  of  London  for  the  sake  of 
influencing  the  people  there  toward  better  local  govern- 
ment and  a  Avider  social  and  intellectual  life. 

Since  1889  more  than  twenty  settlements  have  been 
established  in  America.  Some  of  these  are  associated 
with  various  institutional  features,  but  the  original  idea 
of  a  group  of  "  residents"  must  always  remain  the  essen- 
tial factor. 

The  residents  of  Hull-House  offer  these  maps  and 
papers  to  the  public,  not  as  exhaustive  treatises,  but 
as  recorded  observations  which  may  possibly  be  of 
value,  because  they  are  immediate,  and  the  result  of 
long  acquaintance.  All  the  writers  have  been  in  actual 
residence  in  Hull-House,  some  of  them  for  five  years ; 
their  energies,  however,  have-  been  chiefly  directed,  not 


vm  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

towards  sociological  investigatiou,  but  to  constructive 
work. 

The  colors  in  Charles  Booth's  wage  maps  of  London 
have  been  retained ;  and,  as  in  his  appended  essays,  each 
writer  is  responsible  for  the  statements  appearing  over 
his  own  signature. 

After  this  explanation  it  is  needless  to  add  that  the 
following  papers  do  not  deal  with  settlement  methods 
or  results,  but  simply  record  certain  phases  of  neigh- 
borhood life  with  which  the  writers  have  become  most 
familiar. 

The  appendix  to  the  volume  is  a  mere  cursory  review 
of  the  present  activities  of  Hull-House. 

JANE   ADDAMS. 
335  So.  Halsted  Street,  Chicago. 
January,  1895. 


I. 

MAP  NOTES  AND  COMMENTS. 


SCHEDULES 


Used  ix  the  District  between  Halstkd  Stuket  and  the 
Chicago  Riveh,  Polk  and  Twelfth  Stkeets,  Ciiicaoo. 
United  States  Depaktment  of  Labor  Investigations, 
April  to  August,  1808. 

These  Schedules  fohmed  the  Basts  fijom  which  the  Charts 
were  Colored.     See  Chapter  "Notes  and  Comments." 


'ti\"\\Nt.-. 


MAP   NOTES   AND   COMMENTS. 


BY    AGNKS    SINCLAIK    lIOLHUdOK. 


GENERAL  COMMENTS. 

The  present  work  is  tlie  result  of  an  attempt  on  the 
part  of  some  of  the  residents  of  JIull-House  to  piit  into 
graphic  form  a  few  facts  concerning  the  secti(jn  of 
Chicago  immediately  east  of  the  House. 

^he  boundaries  of  the  district  are  Halsted  Street  on 
the  west  and  State  on  the  east,  Polk  on  the  north  and 
Twelfth  Street  on  the  south;  and  the  inhabitants,  ;is  the 
maps  show,  are  chiefly  foreigners.  From  Halsted  to 
State  is  one  mile,  from  I'olk  to  Twelfth,  one  third  of  a 
mile.  This  third  of  a  sfjuare  mile  includes  east  of  the 
river  a  criminal  district  which  ranks  as  one  of  the  most 
openly  and  flagrantly  vicious  in  the  civilized  world,  and 
west  of  the  same  stream  the  poorest,  and  jjrobaldy  the 
most  crowded  section  of  Chicago.  At  the  extreme 
northwest  of  the  whole,  on  Halsted,  near  Polk,  is  situ- 
ated Hull-House,  within  easy  walking  distance  of  thn 
densely  populated  network  of  streets  and  alleys  on  the 
west  side,  claiming  our  chief  attention. 

A  string  of  small  shops,  the  best  sides  of  two  or  three 
factories,  and  a  few  rather  pretentious  l)rick  store  fronts 

3 


4  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

form  an  outer  fringe  on  Halsted  and  Twelfth  Streets, 
and  give  one  the  impression  of  a  well-to-do  neighbor- 
hood. The  main  thoroughfares  running  parallel  with 
Halsted  and  the  river  between  Polk  and  Twelfth  are 
semi-business  streets,  and  contain  a  rather  cheap  collec- 
tion of  tobacco-stands,  saloons,  old-iron  establishments, 
and  sordid  looking  fancy-shops,  as  well  as  several  fac- 
tories, and  occasional  small  dwelling-houses  tucked  in 
like  babies  under  the  arras  of  industry.  The  cross 
streets  running  parallel  with  Polk  between  Halsted  and 
the  river  are  filled  with  dwelling-houses,  built  for  one 
family,  but  generally  tenanted  by  several,  and  occasion- 
ally serving  as  bakery,  saloon,  or  restaurant  as  well  as 
residence.  The  back  doors  of  large  establishments  give 
glimpses  of  the  inwardness  of  factory  life,  and  bent 
figures  stitching  at  the  basement  windows  proclaizn  that 
the  sweater  is  abroad  in  the  land.  Furnished  rooms  for 
rent  are  numerous ;  Italian  rag  and  wine  shops  abound  ; 
dressmakers',  calciminers',  and  cobblers'  signs  in  Bohe- 
mian, German,  and  Russian  are  not  infrequent;  while 
the  omnipresent  midwife  is  announced  in  polyglot  on 
every  hand.. 

Enumeration  shows  eighty-one  saloons  west  of  the 
river,  besides  a  number  of  "  delicatessen,"  "  restaura- 
tionen,"  and  cigar-stands  where  some  liquor  is  sold. 
The  proportion  of  wooden  buildings  to  brick  is  approxi- 
mately two  to  one  throughout  this  part  of  the  section  ; 
but  on  the  south  side  of  Polk  Street  it  is  about  four  to 
one,  and  on  Ewing  more  than  five  to  one.  These  figures 
include  only  houses  fronting  on  the  street,  and  in  the 
case  of  large  brick  blocks  assume  that  each  portion  cov- 
ering a  city  lot  is  a  building.     Structures  of  mixed  brick 


GENERAL    COMMENTS.  5 

and  wood  are  counted  in  with  the  brick  buildings,  and 
a  few  stone  fronts  form  an  exchisive,  if  inconsiderable, 
class,  by  themselves.^  The  only  one  of  interest  is  No. 
137  DeKoven  Street,  the  site  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
great  Chicago  fire. 

It  is  a  striking  fa'ct  that  where  the  better  houses 
prevail,  as  on  DeKoven,  Bunker,  Taylor,  and  Forquer 
Streets,  the  street  is  almost  solidly  built  up ;  while  on 
Clinton,  Jefferson,  and  Des  Plaincs  the  more  scattered 
houses  are  veritable  shells.  LOne  feels  very  clear,  how- 
ever, after  long  acquaintance  with  the  neighborhood, 
and  after  visits  to  many  of  the  homes,  that  the  poorest 
of  the  tiny  wooden  houses,  damp  and  unwholesome  as 
they  may  be,  offer  nothing  to  compare  with  the  hideous- 
ness  shut  up  in  the  inside  rooms  of  the  larger,  higher, 
and  to  the  casual  eye  the  better  tenements  of  more  pre- 
tentious aspect.  The  smart  frontage  is  a  mere  screen, 
not  only  for  the  individual  houses,  but  for  the  street  as 
a  whole.  Rear  tenements  and  alleys  form  the  core  of 
the  district,  and  it  is  there  that  the  densest  crowds  of 
the  most  wretched  and  destitute  congregate.  Little 
idea  can  be  given  of  the  filthy  and  rotten  tenements, 
the  dingy  courts  and  tumble-down  sheds,  the  foul  stables 
and  dilapidated  outhouses,  the  broken  sewer-pipes,  the 
])iles  of  garbage  fairly  alive  with  diseased  odors,  and  of 
the  numbers  of  children  filling  every  nook,  working  and 
playing  in  every  room,  eating  and  sleeping  in  every 
window-sill,  pouring  in  and  out  of  every  door,  and 
seeming  literally  to  pave  every  scrap  of  "yard."  In 
one  block  the  writer  numbered  over  seventy-five  children 
in  the  open  street;  but  the  effort  proved  futile  when  she 
tried  to  keep  the  count  of  little  people  surging  in  antl 


G  lllLL-norsE   MAI'S    A     1)    ]'Al-i:i!S. 

oul  of  piissajje-ways,  ami  up  and  down  outside  staircases, 
like  a  veritalde  stream  of  life.  J) 

One  can  but  rej,Mrd  the  unpaved  and  uncared  for 
alleys  as  an  especially  threatening  feature  in  all  this 
unpleasing  picture ;  and  yet  between  l^olk  and  Ewing 
Streets,  and  also  between  Ewing  and  Fonpier,  where 
there  are  no  alleys,  the  condition  of  the  rear  tenements 
is  tlie  most  serious. 

(^It  is  customary  for  the  lower  floor  of  the  rear  houses 
to  be  used  as  a  stable  and  outhouse,  while  the  upjier 
rooms  serve  entire  families  as  a  place  for  eating,  sleeping, 
l)cing  liorn,  and  dying.  Where  there  are  alleys  the 
refuse  and  manure  are  sometimes  removed ;  where 
there  are  none,  it  would  seem  they  accumulate  undis- 
turljed.  In  front  of  each  house  stand  garbage-receivers, 
—  wooden  boxes  repulsive  to  every  sense,  even  when  as 
clean  as  their  office  will  permit,  shocking  to  both  mind 
and  instinct  when  rotten,  overfilled,  and  broken,  as  they 
often  arc.  I'ruit-stands  help  to  fill  up  the  sordid 
streets,  and  ice-cream  carts  drive  a  thriving  trade.  One 
liears  little  English  s^joken,  and  the  faces  and  manners 
met  with  are  very  foreign.  '  People  are  noticeably  under- 
sized and  unhealthy,  as  well  to  the  average  observer  as 
to  the  trained  eye  of  the  physician.  Especially  do  the 
many  workers  in  the  tailoring-trades  look  dwarfed  and 
ill-fed;  they  walk  with  a  peculiar  stooping  gait,  and 
their  narrow  chests  and  cramped  hands  are  unmistak- 
able evidence  of  their  calling.  Tuljcrculosis  prevails, 
especially  in  diseases  of  the  lungs  and  intestine,  and 
dfiformity  is  not  unusual.  The  mortality  among  children 
is  great,  and  the  many  babies  look  starved  and  wan. 

yi  Special  InvrMujatinn  of  the  Slums  of  Great   Cities 


GEXEUAL    COMMEXTS.  7 

was  undertaken,  the  spring  of  189o,  by  the  United  States 
Department  of  Labor,  l)y  order  of  Congress  ;  and  as  IMrs. 
Florence  Kelley.  the  Special  Agent  Expert  in  charge  in 
Chicago,  resided  at  Hull-House  while  conducting  the 
investigation,  the  information  collected  by  the  govern- 
ment officials  was  brought  within  the  very  doors. 

The  entire  time  of  four  government  schedule  men 
from  the  6th  of  April  till  the  loth  of  July,  1893,  was 
devoted  to  examining  each  house,  tenement,  and  room  in 
the  district,  and  filling  out  tenement  and  family  sched- 
ules, copies  of  which  are  printed  at  the  end  of  this 
chapter.  These  schedules  were  returned  daily  to  Mrs. 
Kelley ;  and  before  they  were  forwarded  to  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Labor  at  Washington,  a. copy  was  made  by  one 
of  the  Hull-House  residents,  of  the  nationality  of  ^ach 
individual,  his  wages  Avhen  employed,  and  the  number  of 
weeks  he  was  idle  during  the  year  beginning  April  1, 
1892. 

(^In  recording  the  nationality  of  each  person,  his  age, 
and  in  the  case  of  children  under  ten  years  of  age  the 
nationality  of  his  parents  and  his  attendance  at  school, 
were  taken  into  account.  All  under  ten  years  of  age 
who  were  not  pupils  in  the  public  school,  and  who  were 
not  of  American  extraction,  were  classified  with  their 
parents  as  foreigners. 

In  estimating  the  average  weekly  wage  for  the  year, 
first  the  number  of  unemployed  weeks  in  each  individual 
case  was  subtracted  from  the  number  of  Aveeks  in  the 
year,  the  difference  multiplied  by  the  weekly  wage  when 
employed,  and  the  result  divided  by  fifty-two  ;  then  the 
amounts  received  ])y  the  various  members  of  each  fam- 
ily, thus  determined,  were  added  together,  giving  the 


8  i!ull-ii(jU6E  maps  asd  papers. 

average  weekly  income  of  the  family  throughout  the 
year. 

These  records  were  immediately  transferred  in  color 
to  outline  maps,  made  from  the  Greely  and  Carlsen  sur- 
vey, and  generously  prepared  for  the  present  purpose  by 
Mr.  Greely.  These  charts,  with  the  street  names  and 
house  numbers,  enable  the  reader  to  find  any  address, 
the  lots  being  colored  to  indicate,  in  one  case  the  birth- 
place of  each  individual,  in  the  other  the  wage  of  each 
family.  Ke^'s  attached  to  the  outlines  explain  the  sym- 
bols, some  of  the  same  colors  being  used  in  the  two 
cases  Avith  different  meanings. 

The  mode  of  filling  out  the  diagrams  is  slightly  com- 
plex, owing  to  the  fact  that  an  cifort  is  maile  to  give  the 
location  of  each  family  and  individual,  as  nearly  as  may 
be.  In  the  main,  the  basis  of  representation  is  geo- 
graphical, each  lot  being  entirely  colored  over,  whether 
occupied  by  one  person  or  one  hundred.  When  people 
of  different  nationality  or  wage  income,  however,  live  in 
the  same  house,  or  in  houses  on  the  same  lot.  the  space 
given  to  each  on  the  charts  is  proportionate,  not  to  the 
size  of  their  houses  or  rooms,  but  (in  the  birthplace  map) 
to  the  number  of  individuals,  and  (in  the  wage  nuip)  to 
the  numlier  of  families.  Thus  the  geographical  relations 
are  i>reserved,  except  within  the  lot.  where  each  individ- 
ual in  the  one  case,  and  e;u.di  rei)resentative  of  a  family 
in  the  other,  receives  e(imil  recognition,  whether  he 
shares  with  half  a  dozen  otlnM-s  a  room  in  the  rear  of  the 
third  story,  or  occujties  in  solitary  state  the  entire  ground 
floor. 

No  clew  to  the  density  of  population  is  therefiue 
given,  except  indirectly,  in  such  a  case  as  occurs  on  the 


GEXEIIAL    COMMENTS.  9 

corner  of  Polk  and  Clark  Streets,  where  one  might  rea- 
sonably infer  large  numbers  from  the  presence  of  negroes, 
Italians,  Chinamen,  Russians,  Poles,  Germans,  Swiss, 
French-Canadians,  Irish,  and  Americans  in  one  house. 
In  general,  however,  the  solid  blue  blocks  of  Italians 
on  Ewing  Street,  and  the  black  phalanx  of  negroes  on 
Plymouth  Place  represent  more  people  to  the  square 
inch  than  any  other  lots  —  a  fact  Avhich  is  in  no  way 
indicated  on  the  diagrams. 

The  United  States  Department  of  Labor  states  the 
exact  figures  as  part  of  the  report  on  Tlie  Slam  I/ivesti- 
gatlon,  and  all  the  statistics  relating  to  this  subject  are 
officially  published.  But  the  partial  presentation  here 
offered  is  in  more  graphic  and  minute  form ;  and  the  view 
of  each  house  and  lot  in  the  charts,  suggesting  just  how 
members  of  various  nationalities  are  grouped  and  dis- 
posed, and  just  what  rates  of  wages  are  received  in  the 
different  streets  and  sections,  may  have  its  real  as  well 
as  its  picturesque  value.  A  comparison  of  the  two  sets 
of  outlines  may  also  be  of  interest,  showing  in  a  general 
way  which  immigrants  receive  the  highest,  and  Avhich 
the  lowest  rates,  and  furnishing  points  for  and  against 
the  restriction  of  immigration. 

/  The  poor  districts  of  Chicago  present  features  of 
peculiar  interest,  not  only  because  in  so  young  a  city 
history  is  easily  traced,  but  also  because  their  perma- 
nence seems  less  inevitable  in  a  rapidly  changing  and 
growing  municipality  than  in  a  more  immovable  and 
tradition-bound  civilization.  ISfany  conditions  have  been 
allowed  to  persist  in  the  crowded  quarters  west  of  the 
river  because  it  was  thought  the  neighborhood  would 
soon  be  filled  with  factories  and  railroad  terminals,  and 


10  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AyD   PAPERS. 

any  improvemeut  ou  property  "n-oukl  only  be  money 
throAVTi  away.  But  it  is  seen  that  as  factories  are  built 
people  crowd  more  and  more  closely  into  the  houses 
about  them,  and  rear  tenements  fill  up  the  iew  open 
spaces  left.  Although  poor  buildings  bring  in  such 
high  rents  that  there  is  no  business  profit  in  destroying 
them  to  build  new  ones,  the  character  of  many  of  the 
houses  is  such  that  they  literally  rot  away  and  fall  apart 
while  occupied. "  Xew  brick  tenement  houses  constantly 
going  up  replace  wooden  ramshackle  ones  fallen  into  an 
uninhabitable  state.  The  long,  low  house  on  the  north- 
east corner  of  Taylor  and  Jefferson  cannot  last  long.  Xo. 
305  Ewing  is  in  a  desperate  condition,  and  Xo.  958  Polk 
is  disintegrating  day  by  day  and  has  been  abandoned. 
Other  cases  might  be  cited,  and  disappearances  one  after 
another  of  the  old  landmarks  are  not  infrequent.  As 
fast  as  they  drop  away  their  places  are  filled,  and  the 
precarious  condition  of  many  old  dwellings  rencl,ers  a 
considerable  change  in  the  aspect  of  the  neighborhood 
only  a  question  of  a  decade  or  so. 

Where  temporary  shanties  of  one  or  two  stories  are 
replaced  by  substantial  blocks  of  three  or  four,  the  gain 
in  solidity  is  too  often  accompanied  by  a  loss  in  air  and 
light  which  makes  the  very  permanence  of  the  houses  an 
evil.  The  advantages  of  indifferent  plumbing  over  none 
at  all,  and  of  the  temporary  cleanliness  of  new  buildings 
over  old,  seem  doubtful  compensation  for  the  increased 
crowding,  the  more  stifling  atmosphere,  and  the  denser 
darkness  in  the  later  tenements.  In  such  a  transitional 
stage  as  the  present,  there  is  surely  great  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  Chicago  will  take  warning  from  the  experience 
of  older  cities  whose  crowded  quarters  have  become  a 


GENERAL    COMMENTS.  11 

menace  to  the  public  health  and  security.  The  possi- 
bility of  helping  toward  an  iniprovemcMit  in  tlie  sanita- 
tion of  the  neighborhood,  and  toward  an  introduction  of 
some  degree  of  comfort,  has  given  purpose  and  conli- 
dence  to  this  undertaking.  It  is  also  hoped  that  the  set- 
ting forth  of  some  of  the  conditions  shown  in  the  nuips 
and  papers  may  be  of  value,  not  only  to  the  people  of 
Chicago  who  desire  correct  and  accurate  information  con- 
cerning the  foreign  and  populous  parts  of  the  town,  but 
to  the  constantly  increasing  body  of  sociological  students 
more  widely  scattered. 

The  great  interest  and  significance  attached  to  Mr. 
Charles  Booth's  maps  of  London  have  served  as  warm 
encouragement;  and  although  the  eyes  of  the  world  do 
not  centre  upon  this  third  of  a  square  mile  in  the  heart 
of  Chicago  as  iipon  East  London  when  looking  for  the 
very  essence  of  misery,  and  although  the  ground  exam- 
ined here  is  very  circumscribed  compared  with  the  vast 
area  covered  by  Mr.  Booth's  incomparable  studies,  tlie 
two  works  have  much  in  common.  It  is  thought  the 
aim  and  spirit  of  the  present  publication  will  recommend 
it  as  similar  to  its  predecessor  in  essential  respects  ;  while 
the  greater  minuteness  of  this  survey  will  entitle  it  to  a 
rank  of  its  own,  both  as  a  photographic  reproduction  of 
Chicago's  poorest  quarters  on  the  west,  and  her  worst 
on  the  east  of  the  river,  and  as  an  illustration  of  a 
method  of  research.  The  manner  of  investigation  has 
been  painstaking,  and  the  facts  set  forth  are  as  trust- 
worthy as  personal  inquiry  and  intelligent  effort  could 
make  them.  Not  only  was  each  house,  tenement,  and 
room  visited  and  inspected,  but  in  numy  cases  the  reports 
obtained  from  one   jjerson  were  corroborated  by  many 


12  JIULL-nOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

others,  and  statements  from  different  workers  at  the 
same  trades  and  occupations,  as  to  wages  and  unem- 
ployed seasons,  served  as  mutual  confirmation. 

Although  experience  in  similar  investigation  and  long 
residence  in  the  neighborhood  enabled  the  expert  in 
charge  to  get  at  all  particulars  with  more  accuracy  than 
could  have  attended  the  most  conscientious  efforts  of  a 
novice,  it  is  inevitable  that  errors  should  have  crept  in. 
Carelessness  and  indifference  on  the  part  of  those  ques- 
tioned are  undoubtedly  frequent,  and  change  of  occupa- 
tion as  well  as  irregularity  of  employment  entail  some 
confusion  and  uncertainty.  Then,  too,  the  length  of 
time  covered  by  the  investigation  is  so  great  —  one  year 
—  that  neitlier  buildings  nor  tenants  remain  the  same 
throughout. 

West  of  the  river  the  great  majority  of  the  dwellings 
are  wooden  structures  of  temporary  aspect  and  uncertain 
moorings  ;  and  almost  any  day  in  walking  through  a  half- 
dozen  blocks  one  will  see  a  frame  Imilding,  perhaps  two 
or  three,  being  carried  away  on  rollers  to  make  room  for 
some  factory  to  be  erected  on  the  old  site.  Suburban 
cottages  of  remote  date,  with  neither  foundations  nor 
plumbing,  travel  from  place  to  place,  and  even  three- 
story  tenements  make  voyages  toward  the  setting  sun. 
Like  rank  weeds  in  a  fresh  soil,  these  unsubstantial 
houses  sprang  up  in  Chicago's  early  days  ;  and  now  they 
are  being  gradually  supplanted  by  the  more  sturdy 
growth  of  brick  blocks  for  industrial  purposes.  When 
thus  thrown  out,  they  find  a  precarious  foothold  in  some 
rear  yard  that  is  not  entirely  filled  up  with  stables  and 
outhouses,  or  move  into  one  of  the  rare  vacant  lots, 
generally  farther  out  from  the  business  centres.     Fre- 


GENERAL    COMMENTS.  13 

quent  liouso-movings  of  tliis  sort  alter  the  face  of  the 
district  more  or  less  within  a  year,  and  some  neighbor- 
hoods put  oil  a  smarter  look,  wliile  increased  crowding 
continues  in  all. 

Families  also  move  about  constantly,  going  from  tene- 
ment to  tenement,  iinding  more  comfortable,  apartments 
"when  they  are  able  to  pay  for  them,  drifting  into  poorer 
quarters  in  times  of  illness,  enforced  idleness,  or  "  bad 
luck.''  Tenants  evicted  for  non-j)aymeiit  of  rent  form  a 
floating  i)opulation  of  some  yuignitude,  and  a  k(jdak  view 
of  such  a  shifting  scene  must  necessarily  b(3  blurred  and 
imperfect  here  and  there. 

lint  special  details  vary  while  general  conditions 
persist;  and  in  spite  of  undetected  mistakes  and  una- 
voidable inaccuracies,  the  charts  paint  faithfully  the 
character  of  the  region  as  it  existed  during  the  year 
recorded. 

These  notes  and  comments  are  designed  rather  to 
make  the  maps  intelligible  than  to  furnish  independent 
data;  and  the  aim  of  both  maps  and  notes  is  to  i)resent 
conditions  rather  than  to  advance  theories  —  to  bring 
within  reach  of  the  public  exact  information  concerning 
this  quarter  of  Chicago  rather  than  to  ail  vise  methods  by  . 
which  it  may  be  improved.  v^While  vitally  interested  in 
every  question  connected  with  this  part  of  the  city,  and 
especially  concerned  to  enlarge  the  life  and  vigor  of  the 
immediate  neighborhood,  Hull-IIou.se  offers  these  facts 
more  with  the  h(jpe  of  stimulating  inquiry  and  action, 
and  evolving  new  thoughts  and  methods,  than  with  the 
idea  of  recommending  its  own  manner  of  effort.  ) 

Insistent  probing  into  the  lives  of  the  ])oor  would  come 
with  bad  grace  even  from  government  officials,  were  the 


14  IiriJ.-IIOUSE   MAPS    AM)     I'Al'KIiS. 

statistics  ol)taine(l  so  inconsiderable  a.s  to  afford  no  work- 
in},'  basis  for  further  improvement.  The  determination 
to  turn  on  the  searchlight  of  infjuiry  must  be  steady  and 
jiersisteiit  to  accomplish  definite  results,  and  all  spas- 
modic and  sensational  throbs  of  curious  interest  are 
ineffectual  as  well  as  unjustifiable.  The  painful  nature 
of  minute  investigation,  and  the  jjersonal  impertinence 
of  many  of  the  questions  asked,  would  be  unendurable 
and  unpardonable  were  it  not  for  the  conviction  that 
the  i)ublic  conscience  when  roused  must  demand  bet- 
ter surroundings  for  the  most  inert  and  long-suffering 
citizens  of  the  commonwealth.  Merely  to  state  symji- 
toms  and  go  no  farther  would  be  idle ;  but  to  state 
symptoms  in  order  to  ascertain  the  nature  of  disease, 
and  apply,  it  may  be,  its  cure,  is  not  only  scientific,  but 
in  the  highest  sense  humanitarian. 


COMME^TS   ON  MAP   OF  NATIONALITIES.      15 


II. 

COMMENTS   ON  MAP  OF  NATIONALITIES. 

Ix  classifying  the  people  from  so  many  corners  of 
the  earth,  au  effort  has  been  made  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  groups  forming  different  elements  in  social 
and  industrial  life,  without  confusing  the  mind  by  a  sep- 
arate recognition  of  the  people  of  every  country. 

The  English-speaking  class  (white)  embraces  English, 
English-Canadians,  Scotch,  all  Americans  of  native 
parentage,  and  such  children  born  in  this  country  of 
foreign  parents  as  are  over  ten  years  of  age,  or,  if 
younger,  are  in  attendance  upon  any  public  school.  It 
would  be  misleading  to  include  children  under  ten  years 
living  in  a  foreign  colony,  not  in  attendance  upon 
schools  where  English  is  sure  to  l)e  used,  speaking  a 
foreign  language,  and,  although  born  in  this  country, 
ignorant  of  American  life,  manners,  people,  and  of  the 
English  tongue.  West  of  the  river  the  English-speak- 
ing element  is  composed  of  American-born  children, 
rarely  over  twenty  years  of  age,  whose  parents  are 
foreigners,  and  who  bear  so  plainly  the  impress  of  the 
Old  World  that  they  may  more  truly  be  designated 
as  second-generation  immigrants  than  first-generation 
Americans.  East  of  the  river  the  majority  of  the  white 
lots  are  filled  with  genuine  Americans,  most  of  them 
men  and  girls  under  thirty,  who  have  come  to  Chicago 
from  towns  and  country  districts  of  Illinois,  and  from 


16  IIULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AXB  PAPERS. 

Wisconsin,  Micliigan,  and  other  neighboring  States,  most 
of  Avhoni  lead  irregular  lives,  and  very  few  of  whom 
are  found  in  families. 

One  English-speaking  nation  has  been  marked  off 
from  the  class  to  which  it  would  seem  at  first  sight  to 
belong,  and  allotted  peculiar  recognition  and  the  color  of 
the  Emerald  Isle.  The  Irish  (green)  form  so  distinct 
and  important  an  element  in  our  politics  and  civic  life 
that  a  separate  representation   has  been  accorded  them. 

The  negroes  (black)  are  natives  of  the  United  States, 
a  great  number  coming  from  Kentucky. 

The  Bohemians  (yellow)  are  very  numerous  in  the 
southwestern  part  of  the   district  under  consideration. 

The  Scandinavians  (yellow  stripe)  include  Swedes, 
Norwegians,  and  Danes. 

The  Russians  (red)  and  Poles  (red  stripe)  are  closely 
related,  and  uniformly  Jewish ;  a  few  Roumanians  are 
found  among  the  former. 

The  Germans  (mauve)  are  re-enforced  by  a  not  in- 
considerable number  of  Hungarians  and  Austrians  ;  but 
neither  they  nor  the  Dutch  (mauve  stripe)  are  found 
in  large  numbers. 

The  remaining  divisions  of  the  classification  accord- 
ing to  birthplace  are  :  — 

Italian (blue). 

Swiss (blue  stripe). 

French (brown). 

French  Canadian      .  (brown  stripe). 

Greek (olive). 

Syrian (olive  stripe). 

Chinese (orange). 

Arabian (orange  stripe). 

Turk (white  crescent  on  red). 


COMMEXrs   O.V   MAP    OF  SATJOyALITIES.      17 

Eighteen  nations  are  thus  represented  in  this  small 
section  of  Chicago.  They  are  more  or  less  intermingled, 
but  a  decided  tendency  to  drift  into  little  colonies  is  ap- 
parent. The  Italians  are  almost  solidly  packed  into  the 
front  and  rear  tenements  on  Ewing  and  Polk  Streets, 
especially  between  Halsted  and  Jefferson,  and  outnum- 
ber any  single  class  in  the  district.  The  Russian  and  Po- 
lish Jews  cluster  about  Polk  and  Twelfth  Streets,  on  the 
edge  of  the  "  Ghetto,"'  extending  south  beyond  Twelfth. 
The  Bohemians  form  the  third  great  group,  and  occui)y 
the  better  streets  toward  the  corner  of  Twelfth  and  Hal- 
sted, extending  south  and  west  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
map. 

The  Irish,  although  pretty  well  sprinkled,  are  most 
numerous  on  Fon^uer  Street,  which  is  a  shade  better 
than  Ewing  or  l*olk.  A  few  French  pepper  the  west- 
ern edge  of  the  section,  the  poorer  members  of  a  large 
and  Avell-to-flo  French  colony,  of  Avhich  the  nucleus  is  the 
French  church  near  Vernon  Park.  Only  two  colored 
people  are  found  west  of  the  river,  while  large  numbers 
are  wedged  in  Ph'mouth  Place  and  Clark  Street. 

The  Italians,  the  Russian  and  Polish  Jews,  and  the 
Bohemians  lead  in  niimbers  and  importance.  The  Irish 
control  the  polls ;  while  the  Germans,  although  they 
make  up  more  than  a  third  of  Chicago's  population,  are 
not  very  numerous  in  this  neighborhood  ;  and  the  Scan- 
dinavians, who  fill  north-west  Chicago,  are  a  mere  hand- 
ful. Several  Chinese  in  basement  laundries,  a  dozen 
Arabians,  about  as  many  Greeks,  a  few  Syrians  and  seven 
Turks  engaged  in  various  occupations  at  the  World's 
Fair,  give  a  cosmopolitan  flavcn-  to  the  region,  but  are 
comparatively  inconsiderable  in  interest. 


18  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

Americans  of  native  ^Ktrei^fs  are  almost  entirely  con- 
fined to  the  part  of  the  district  east  of  the  river ;  and 
it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  white  patches  on 
the  west  side  represent  children  who  are  as  foreign,  in 
appearance  at  least,  as  their  Neapolitan  or  Muscovite 
parents. 

The  white  portions  representing  the  aggregate  num- 
bers of  English  speaking-people  found  in  the  house 
or  houses  on  each  city  lot,  including  American-born 
children  (often  belonging  to  a  dozen  different  families), 
are  uniformly  placed  next  the  street-front,  so  that  the 
eye  readily  determines  the  proportion  in  any  street  or 
block,  as  well  as  in  the  space  covered  by  one  lot.  The 
green  (Irish)  come  next  behind ;  the  yellow  (Bohemian) 
follow  ;  and  the  blue  (Italian),  red  (Russian),  and  red 
stripe  (Polish)  occupy  the  rear  of  the  lot  in  the  order 
named ;  while  the  other  colors  there  maybe  hover  be- 
tween the  two  extremes.  Since  it  is  impossible  in  so 
small  a  map  of  two  dimensions  to  represent  accurately 
the  position  of  the  tenements  occupied  by  members  of  va- 
rious nationalities  when  the  houses  are  two,  three,  and 
four  stories  high,  the  arrangement  of  colors  is  designed 
to  suggest  the  mass,  rather  than  the  location,  of  the  vari- 
ous peoples  indicated  by  them. 

In  some  respects,  however,  there  is  a  certain  corre- 
spondence between  this  disposition  of  colors  and  the  lo- 
cation of  tenants  thereby  represented,  when  many  born 
in  different  covmtries  occupy  rooms  and  houses  on  the 
same  lot.  Italians,  if  present,  are  invariably  found  in  the 
rear  tenements,  and  the  same  is  true  of  Russian  and  Polish 
Jews  ;  however,  in  most  cases  where  one  apartment  con- 
tains Italians  or  Jews,  the  whole  tenement  house  is  given 


COMMEXTS   OX  MAP   OF  XATIOXALITIES.       19 

over  to  them  ;  for  the  arrival  of  either  one  is  foHowed  by 
the  prompt  departure  of  all  tenants  of  other  nationality 
who  can  manage  to  get  (piarters  elsewhei'e,  in  iiHich  the 
same  way  that  the  ai)i)earani'e  of  a  cheap  money  is  the 
signal  for  a  scarcity  of  dearer  coins.  It  is  rare  that  one 
will  find  Italians  and  Jews  in  the  same  house,  moreover; 
for  the  lofty  disdain  Avith  which  the  Daijo  regards  the 
Sheenif  cannot  be  measured  except  by  the  scornful  con- 
tempt with  which  the  Sheeny  scans  the  Dago.  Further 
discussion  of  these  two  important  factions,  and  of  the 
Bohemians,  is  found  in  separate  chapters  devoted  en- 
tirely to  their  consideration. 


20  HULL-HOUSE  2^1  APS  xiND  PAPERS. 


III. 

COMMENTS   ON  THE  WAGE-MAP. 

Ix  turning  from  the  nationality-map  to  the  ^vage-map, 
the  difference  between  the  bases  of  representation  in 
the  two  may  again  be  called  to  mind.  While  in  the 
former  case  the  individual  is  the  unit,  in  the  latter  it 
is  the  family,  —  head,  wife,  children,  and  such  parents 
brothers,  cousins,  and  other  relatives  as  live  in  the  same 
dwelling,  and  are  scheduled  as  one  household.  It  is  not 
easy  to  sa}'  just  what  constitutes  "family  life"  in  this 
connection.  It  is  not  a  common  table  —  often  enough 
there  is,  properly  speaking,  no  table  at  all.  It  is  not 
even  a  common  cooking-stove,  for  several  families  fre- 
quently use  the  same.  The  only  constant  factor  in  the 
lives  of  the  members  of  such  a  circle,  beyond  the  tie  of 
kinship,  is  the  more  or  less  irregular  occupancy  of  the 
same  tenement,  at  least  at  night.  Every  boarder,  and 
each  member  of  the  family  who  pays  board,  ranks  as  a 
self-supporting  individual,  and  is  therefore  classed  as 
a  separate  wage-earner.  East  of  the  river  almost  every- 
body boards,  and  a  large  proportion  of  the  families  on 
the  west  side  keep  boarders  and  lodgers  ;  Avhile  there 
are  also  frequent  boarding  and  lodging  houses  containing 
large  numbers  of  people.  At  the  time  of  scheduling, 
sixty  men  sleep  every  night  in  one  basement  room  at 
Xo.  133  Ewing  Street ;  and  similar  instances  of  less 
serious  crowding  are  found. 


COMMEXTS    ON    THE    WAGE-MAP.  21 

It  may  seem  at  first  sight  misleading  to  call  each 
single  man  of  over  twenty-one  a  "  family,"  and  accord 
him  the  same  representation  as  is  given  his  father  with 
six,  eight,  or  ten  children  or  other  dependants  whom  he 
must  support.  But  in  this  neighborhood,  generally  a 
wife  and  children  are  sources  of  income  as  well  as 
avenues  of  expense  ;  and  the  women  wash,  do  ''  home 
finishing"  on  ready-made  clothiiig,  or  pick  and  sell 
rags ;  the  boys  run  errands  and  "  shine ;  "  the  girls  work 
in  factories,  get  places  as  cash-girls,  or  sell  papers  on 
the  streets ;  and  the  very  babies  sew  buttons  on  knee- 
pants  and  shirt-waists,  each  bringing  in  a  trifle  to  fill 
out  the  scanty  income.  The  theory  that  "every  man 
supports  his  own  family"  is  as  idle  in  a  district  like 
this  as  the  fiction  that  "  every  one  can  get  work  if  he 
wants  it." 

A  glance  at  the  black  lots  on  the  map,  representing  an 
average  Aveekly  family  income  of  $5.00  or  less,  will  show 
roughly  the  proportion  of  families  unable  to  get  together 
$260  dollars  a  year.  The  Italian,  who  is  said  to  derive 
his  nickname,  ''Dago,"  from  his  characteristic  occupa- 
tion of  digging  on  the  ferra  via,  is,  as  a  rule,  emplo3^ed 
on  the  railroads  from  twenty  to  thirt}*  weeks  in  the  year 
at  $1.25  a  day ;  that  is,  he  receives  $150.00  to  $225.00 
a  year  on  the  average.  The  fact  that  this  is  not  an  in- 
come of  $4.32  a  week,  or  even  $2.88  a  week,  throughout 
the  year,  but  of  $7.50  a  week  half  the  year,  and  nothing 
the  other  half,  makes  it  more  difticult  for  the  laborer  to 
expend  wisely  the  little  he  has  than  if  the  wages  were 
smaller  and  steady.  This  irregularity  of  employment, 
whether  caused  by  the  season,  weather,  fashion,  or  the 
caprices  of  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  affects  not 


22  UULL-UOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

only  the  unskilled,  but  to  a  considerable  degree  the 
employee  of  the  manufactories,  and  the  artisan.  The 
poorest  suffer  from  intermittent  work,  of  course,  the 
most.  Many  paupers,  and  old  people  living  "  with  their 
friends,"  are  found  among  these  black  spots  in  darkest 
Chicago. 

The  next  class  is  colored  blue,  and  embraces  families 
earning  from  $5.00  to  $10.00  a  week,  including  $10.00. 
This  is  probably  the  largest  class  in  the  district. 

Red  indicates  $10.00  to  $15.00,  including  $15.00 ; 
green,  $15.00  to  $20.00,  including  $20.00;  and  yellow, 
anything  over  $20.00.     Mauve  signifies  unknown. 

The  wage-earners  proper  are  confined  largely  to  the 
first  four  classes.  The  fifth  (yellow)  is  largely  composed 
of  land  and  property  owners,  saloon  and  shop  keepers, 
and  those  in  business  for  themselves.  All  such  proper- 
tied people  are  included  in  the  fifth  class,  even  if  they 
declined  to  make  a  statement  as  to  their  income,  it  being 
reasonable  to  suppose  them  well-to-do.  Members  of  the 
sixth  class  are  chiefly  pedlers,  occasionally  musicians 
and  street-players,  and  almost  invariably  live  from 
hand  to  mouth,  keeping  up  a  precarious  existence  by  ir- 
regular and  varied  occupations.  Most  of  this  class  are 
ver}'  poor  indeed,  and  in  point  of  income  would  probably 
come  under  one  of  the  first  two  classes ;  that  is,  they 
generally  receive  less  than  $10.00  a  week,  many  less 
than  $5.00. 

The  white  lots  that  are  so  numerous  east  of  the  river 
indicate  brothels.  These  houses  are  separately  classed, 
both  because  their  numbers  and  whereabouts  are  of  im- 
portance, and  because  it  would  be  unfortunate  to  confuse 
them  with  laboring-people  by  estimating  their  incomes 


COMMEXTS    OX    THE    WAGE-MAP.  23 

in  the  same  way.  Usually  the  schedules  eoiitaiii  no  in- 
furnuitiou  as  to  the  amount  of  money  taken  in  ;  but,  ac- 
cording to  the  few  entries  made,  the  gains  vary  widely, 
from  $5.00  to  $50.00  a  week.  The  most  interesting  fact 
brought  out  by  the  investigation  in  this  connection  is 
that  the  brothels  in  this  section  are  almost  invariably 
occupied  by  American  girls.  A  comparison  of  the  na- 
tionality-map with  the  one  under  consideration  will 
make  this  plain.  Few  of  the  girls  are  entered  on  the 
schedules  as  Chicago-born,  and  the  great  majority  come 
from  the  central-eastern  States.  There  are  many  colored 
women  among  them,  and  in  some  houses  the  whites  and 
blacks  are  mixed.  Only  such  places  as  report  themselves 
brothels  are  so  entered  in  the  maps,  the  many  doubtful 
*'  dressmakers "  in  the  same  region  being  classified  as 
wage-earners,  according  to  their  own  statements.  There 
are  no  declared  brothels  in  the  region  west  of  the  river. 


II. 

THE  S  WE  A  TINGS  YSTE3L 


THE   SWEATING-SYSTEM. 

BV    FLOlilCNCK    KKI.I.ICY, 
State  Inspector  of  Factories  and  Workshops  for  Illinois, 

TnE  sweating-sj'stem  is  confined  in  Chicago  to  the 
garment  trades,  which  employ  some  25,000  to  30,000 
people  (as  nearly  as  we  can  estimate),  among  whom 
this  system  is  found  in  all  its  modes  and  tenses.  The 
manufacture  of  garments  is  in  the  hands  of  wholesale 
firms.  Their  factories  are  grouped  in  the  first  ward 
of  the  city,  within  a  radius  of  four  blocks,  where  they 
have  large,  well-lighted,  fairly  wholesome  workrooms,  in 
which  the  garments  for  the  entire  trade  are  cut.  The 
cutters,  having  a  strong  organization,  refuse  to  work  ex- 
cept under  conditions  more  or  less  equal  with  the  con- 
ditions of  work  usual  in  the  well-organized  trades.  The 
hours  and  wages  prevailing  in  the  cutters'  shops,  there- 
fore, do  not  differ  much  from  the  hours  and  wages  usual 
in  the  well-organized  trades.  Some  of  the  wholesale 
manufacturers  have  not  only  the  cutters'  shops,  but  also 
large  workrooms,  in  which  all  the  processes  of  clothing 
manufacture  are  carried  on.  These  latter  are  known  as 
"  inside  shops,"  or  garment  factories ;  and  in  them  the 
employees  work  under  conditions  vastly  better  than  are 
imposed  upon  the  sweaters'  victims,  though  still  farther 
than  the  cutters  below  the  standard  of  hours  and  wages 
maintained  in  the  well-organized  trades. 

In  the  inside  shops  the  sanitary  conditions  are  fairly 
good ;  and  power  is  frequently,  though  Ijy  no  means  uid- 

27 


28  UULL-HOLSE  MAPS  ANB   PAPERS. 

formly,  furnished  for  running  machines.  The  same 
division  of  hibor  prevails  as  in  the  smaller  shops ;  and 
the  garment,  after  being  cut,  goes  to  the  operator,  who 
stitches  the  seams,  to  the  buttonholer,  the  finisher,  and 
the  presser.  In  the  inside  shop  the  presser  is  usually 
also  a  skilled  cleaner,  and  adds  to  his  function  of  press- 
ing the  garment  made  on  the  premises  the  duty  of  re- 
moving grease  and  other  soils  from  the  garments  returned 
from  the  sweaters'  shops.  There  are  also  usually  em- 
ployed in  these  shops  both  basters  and  girls  who  pull  bast- 
ings out  of  the  lijiished  garments.  Formerly  the  operator 
was  often  an  "  all  around  worker,"  who  received  the  gar- 
ment from  the  cutters,  and  handed  it  finished  to  the  ex- 
aminer ;  but  the  competition  of  the  sweaters  has  led  to 
a  very  general  introduction  of  hand-girls,  one  of  whom 
works  with  each  operator,  doing  the  hand-finishing  on 
the  garment  as  it  comes  from  the  operator.  The  sweat- 
ing-system has  affected  disastrously  the  condition  of  the 
employees  in  the  inside  shops,  since  any  demand  of  the 
inside  hands  for  increased  wages  or  shorter  hours  is 
promptly  met  by  transfer  of  work  from  the  inside  shop 
to  a  sweater  ;  and  the  cutters  alone  remain  secure  from 
this  competition. 

A  very  important  functionary  in  the  inside  clothing 
shops  is  the  examiner,  who  receives  finished  garments 
both  from  the  inside  hands  and  the  sweaters,  and  passes 
upon  the  satisfactoriness  of  the  work.  Incidentally,  it 
is  a  painful  duty  of  the  examiner  to  find  and  destroy  the 
vermin  commonly  infesting  garments  returned  from  out- 
side workers. 

Children  are  not  employed  to  any  considerable  extent 
in  the  inside  shops,  and  the  employees  are  usually  Eng- 


THE  sn'EAriyG-svsrEM.  29 

lish-speaking  workers,  though  comparatively  few  native 
Americans  are  left  in  the  garment  trades,  even  in  the 
inside  shops.  The  organizations  of  employees  are  fee- 
ble, both  numerically  and  financially,  except  the  cutters' 
union ;  and  wages  in  the  best  inside  shops  are  far  below 
the  rates  common  in  well-organized  trades,  and  are  rap- 
idly and  steadily  falling. 

(With  two  exceptions,  every  manufacturer  of  garments 
in  Chicago  gives  out  clothing  to  be  made  in  tenement 
houses.  This  is  true  of  white  underwear  and  custom- 
made  outer  wear,  quite  as  much  as  of  the  ready-made 
clothing  ordinaril}-  associated  in  the  public  mind  with 
the  sweating-system.  There  are  three  common  varia- 
tions in  the  manner  of  giving  out  goods.  jNIany  manu- 
facturers have  closed  their  inside  shoi)S,  and  retain  only 
their  cutting-rooms.  These  give  garments  directly  to 
large  numbers  of  individual  employees,  who  make  them 
up  in  their  dwellings  ;  or  to  sweaters,  or  to  both.  INIan- 
ufacturers  Avho  retain  their  inside  shops  commonly  give 
out  garments  in  both  these  Avays  ;  and  many  of  them  also 
make  a  practice  of  requiring  employees  who  work  b}^  day 
to  take  home  garments  at  night,  and  on  Saturday,  to  be 
made  at  home  on  Sunday. 

Every  manufacturer  keeps  a  list  of  the  names  and  ad- 
dresses of  the  people  to  whom  he  gives  ovit  garments  to 
1)6  ma<le  up,  and  is  required  by  law  to  show  this  list  on 
demand  to  the  factory  and  Avorkshop  inspectors. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  inspectors  to  follow  up  these 
lists,  and  examine  the  surroundings  amidst  wliifh  this 
work  is  done;  and  they  report  that  the  conditions  in 
which  garments  are  made  that  are  given  out  from  the 
inside  shops  for  night  work  and  Sunday  work  differ  not 


30  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

a  jot  from  the  tenement-hoxise  shops  and  the  sweaters' 
home  finishers'  dwellings.  Thus,  a  recent  night  inspec- 
tion of  Avork  given  out  from  one  of  the  largest  cloak 
manufactories  in  the  West  resulted  as  follows  :  The  gar- 
ment maker  was  found  in  his  tenement  dwelling  in  the 
rear  of  a  factory.  With  his  family,  a  wife  and  four  in- 
describably filthy  children,  he  occupies  a  kitchen  and 
two  bedrooms.  The  farther  bedroom  could  be  entered  only 
by  passing  through  the  other  rooms.  This  farther  bed- 
room, where  the  man  was  found  at  work,  was  7X7X8 
feet,  and  contained  a  bed,  a  machine,  one  chair,  a  reek- 
ing lamp,  and  tAvo  men.  The  bed  seemed  not  to  have 
been  made  up  in  weeks  ;  and  in  the  bed,  in  a  heap,  there 
lay  two  overcoats,  two  hats,  a  mass  of  bed-covers,  and 
nine  fine  tan-color  capes  trimmed  with  ecru  lace,  a  tenth 
cape  being  on  the  machine  in  process  of  stitching.  The 
whole  dwelling  was  found  to  be  crawling  with  vermin, 
and  the  capes  were  not  free  from  it. 

The  manufacturers  hold  their  outside  workers  respon- 
sible for  the  return  of  the  goods  ;  and  sweaters  have  been 
prosecuted  for  larceny,  and  have  been  followed  even 
beyond  the  borders  of  the  State,  and  brought  back  for 
prosecution  under  the  criminal  law  for  failing  to  return 
goods  intrusted  to  them.  But  the  manufacturers  do 
not  hold  themselves  responsible  for  the  dealings  of  the 
outside  workers  with  their  victims.  Thus,  a  sweater 
extradited  from  another  State,  and  prosecuted  here  for 
larceny  of  unfinished  garments,  is  subject  merely  to  a 
civil  suit  on  the  part  of  his  employees  for  hundreds  of 
dollars  of  wages  due  them ;  while  the  manufacturer  is 
in  no  degree  responsible  for  the  payment  of  these  wages 
for  work  done  upon  garments  belonging  to  him.      Such 


TJIE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  31 

cases  have  not  been  rare ;  and  tlie  manufacturers  dis- 
claim all  moral  responsibility  to  the  unfortunate  victims, 
as  they  discUiim  all  responsil)ility  to  the  purcliasing 
public  for  disease  carried  in  garments  made  in  the 
sweaters'  victims'  infectious  homes. 

TIIK    SWEATERS. 

The  name  of  the  sweaters  is  legion.  ^lore  than  a 
thousand  of  their  shops  have  been  inspected,  and  more 
than  eight  hundred  licensed  by  the  city;  while  it  is  an 
open  secret  that  these  numbers  fall  far  below  the  total 
actually  existing.  It  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  keep 
perfect  lists  of  sweaters  ;  since  a  man  may  be  an  operator 
to-day,  a  sweater  on  a  small  scale  next  week,  may  move 
his  shop  in  the  night  to  avoid  the  payment  of  rent,  and 
may  be  found  working  as  operator  in  an  inside  shop  at 
the  close  of  the  season. 

(The  sweaters  differ  from  the  cutters  in  their  relation 
to  the  manufacturers,  in  that  the  sweaters  have  no  organi- 
zation, and  are  incapable  of  making  any  organized  demand 
for  a  standard  of  prices.  \  They  are  separated  by  differ- 
ences of  religion,  nationality,  language,  and  location. 
As  individuals  they  haggle  with  the  manufacturers,  un- 
dercutting each  other,  and  calculating  upon  their  power 
to  reduce  the  pay  of  their  employees  below  any  point 
to  which  the  manufacturers  may  reduce  theirs ;  and  as 
individuals  they  tyrannize  over  the  victims  who  have  the 
misfortune  to  work  in  their  shops.  There  has  never 
been,  and  there  is  not  now,  in  Chicago  any  association  of 
sweaters  of  any  kind  whatsoever.  There  is,  therefore, 
no  standard  price  for  the  making  of  any  garment,  either 
for  the  sweater  or  his  victim.      With  every  change  of 


32  UULL-UOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPEBS. 

style,  there  is  a  change  of  price,  and  the  tendency  of  the 
change  is  always  downward.  The  fashion  and  the  change 
of  seasons  are  an  ever-ready  excuse  for  the  manufactur- 
ers, who  constantly  aim  to  concentrate  the  work  of  the 
year  into  the  shortest  possible  season.  There  are  two 
reasons  for  this  :  In  a  short  season  the  turn-over  of  the 
capital  invested  is  quick  and  comparatively  sure ;  and  a 
more  sinister  consideration  is  the  fact  that  sweaters  who 
have  long  been  without  work,  and  whose  coming  sea- 
son threatens  to  be  vStj  short,  are  ready  to  take  work 
upon  any  terms  offered  them.  The  consequence  of  the 
concentration  of  the  manufacture  of  garments  into  short, 
recurrent  seasons  is  an  extreme  pressure  upon  the  con- 
tractor for  the  speediest  possi])le  return  of  the  garments 
given  him  ;  and,  hitherto,  this  pressure  has  forced  the 
sweaters'  victims  to  work  far  into  the  night,  and  to  dis- 
regard Sunday  and  all  holidays.  It  is  the  belief  of  the 
sweaters'  victims  as  well  as  of  the  inspectors,  that  a  rigid 
enforcement  of  the  eight-hour  law  within  these  shops 
will  compel  the  sweaters  to  increase  the  number  of  em- 
ployees, enlarge  their  shops,  and  so  create  groups  numeri- 
cally too  strong  to  submit  to  conditions  easily  imposed 
upon  ten  or  a  dozen  very  poor  people. 

By  persistent  prosecutions  of  sweaters  found  employ- 
ing children  under  the  age  of  fourteen  years,  the  practice 
has  been  to  some  extent  broken  up.  During  the  effort  to 
remove  them  from  these  shops,  there  were  found  boys 
whose  backs  have  been  made  crooked  for  life  by  contin- 
uous work  at  heavy  machines,  and  boys  and  girls  unable 
to  speak  English,  and  equally  unable  to  read  or  write  in 
any  language. 

The  sweaters  are  found  in  all  parts  of  the  city.     They 


THE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  33 

are  of  nine  nationalities,  speak  nine  different  languages, 
and  are  of  several  religions.  The  employees  ordinarily 
follow  the  nationality  and  religion  of  the  sweater ;  though 
Swedes  are  sometimes  found  employing  Bohemian  chil- 
dren, and  Russian  Jews  are  found  with  employees  of 
various  nationalities.  In  general,  however,  the  language 
,  of  the  shop  is  the  language  of  the  sweater,  and  follows 
the  nationality  of  the  colony  in  which  it  is  located. 

THE    XrXETEEXTH^VARD. 

In  the  nineteenth  ward  the  sweaters  are  Russian  Jews 
and  Bohemians ;  and  their  employees  in  the  shops  are  of 
the  same  nationality,  while  their  home  finishers  are  ex- 
clusively Italians,  —  the  wives  and  daughters  of  the  street- 
sweepers  and  railroad  gang  hands,  who  form  so  large  a 
part  of  the  population  of  the  ward.  The  garments  made 
here  are  principally  coats,  cloaks,  trousers,  knee-pants, 
and  shirts.  There  are  one  hundred  and  sixty-two  shops, 
employing  men,  women,  and  children. 

The  shops  are,  without  exception,  in  tenement  houses 
or  in  the  rear  of  tenement  houses,  in  twa^tory  buildings 
facing  alleys  that  are  usually  unpaved  aiiJ^^Hivays  nox- 
ious with  the  garbage  and  refuse  of  a  tenenient-house 
district.  If  the  sweater's  shop  is  in  a  tenenJ^t  house, 
it  is  sometimes  —  but  very  rarely  —  in  the  ground  floor 
front  room,  built  for  a  store  and  lighted  by  large  store 
windows.  \But  far  more  commonly  it  is  a  basement,  or  an 
attic,  or  the  flat  over  a  saloon,  or  the  shed  over  a  stable./ 
All  the  tenement  houses  selected  either  for  shops  or 
home  finishers  are  of  the  worst  and  most  crowded  de- 
scription. The  staircases  are  narrow,  and  are  used  in 
common   by  tenante  and  garment  workers,  so  that  in- 


34  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

feetious  diseases  breaking  out  among  the  SAvarniing  chil- 
dren can  scarcely  fail  to  be  communicated  to  garments 
an}^ where  under  the  same  roof,  because  the  utmost 
laxity  prevails  in  the  matter  of  isolation.  The  unsani- 
tary condition  of  many  of  these  tenement  houses,  and 
the  ignorance  and  abject  poverty  of  the  tenants,  insure 
the  maximum  probability  of  disease ;  and  diphtheria, 
scarlet-fever,  smallpox,  typhoid,  scabies,  and  worse 
forms  of  skin  diseases,  have  been  found  in  alarming 
proximity  to  garments  of  excellent  quality  in  process  of 
manufacture  for  leading  firms. 

There  is  not  in  the  whole  ward  a  clothing-shop  in  any 
building  erected  for  the  purpose ;  and  in  no  case  is 
steam-power  supplied,  but  the  use  of  foot-power  is  luii- 
versal.  In  but  one  case  known  to  me  within  this  ward 
has  a  sweater  acquired  means  sufficient  to  own  the 
premises  on  Avhich  his  shop  is  carried  on.  Employers 
of  this  class  are  usuall}^  tenants,  who  rent  by  the  week 
or  month,  and  move  upon  the  shortest  notice.  To  illus- 
trate :  There  is  at  165  West  Twelfth  Street  a  crowded 
tenement  house,  with  a  Chinese  laundry  in  the  ground 
floor  front,*  and  swarming  families  above.  In  the 
ground  floor  rear  is  a  Jewish  butcher-shop,  where  sau- 
sage (not  of  pork)  is  made  during  part  of  the  year;  but 
at  midsummer,  meat  is  roasted  to  supply  the  demand  of 
a  large  surrounding  colony  of  Russian  Jews.  Over  this 
biitcher-shop  is  a  tailor-shop,  into  which  the  fumes  and 
heat  of  the  wholesale  roasting  below  rise  in  the  most 
overpowering  manner.  This  shop  possesses  an  irre- 
sistible attraction  to  sweaters  of  several  varieties.  It 
was  occupied  last  summer  by  a  firm,  of  cloakmakers. 
When  they  were  required  to  vacate  by   reason   of    its 


THE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  35 

unsanitary  condition,  the  shop  stood  empty  but  a  short 
time,  when  two  coat-making  partners  moved  in  with  a 
large  body  of  victims.  As  the  landlord  could  not  be 
induced  to  make  any  improvement,  these  also  were  re- 
quired to  move ;  and  the  shop  is  now  occupied  by  a  vet- 
eran knee-])auts  maker,  avIio  moved  into  it  when  required 
to  separate  his  shop  from  his  dwelling  as  a  sanitary 
measure ! 

Under  a  clause  of  the  law  which  prohibits  the  use  of 
any  bedroom  or  kitchen  for  the  manufacture  of  garments 
by  any  person  outside  of  the  immediate  family  living 
therein,  the  inspectors  are  waging  war  upon  contractors 
who  employ  help  in  kitchen  or  bedroom,  or  in  any  room 
accessible  only  by  going  through  the  living-rooms  of  the 
famil}'.  The  law  is  loosely  drawn,  the  difficulties  are 
many,  and  progress  is  slow  towards  an  entire  separation 
of  shop  and  dwelling.  Xor  will  such  separation  ever  be 
complete  until  all  manufacture  in  any  tenement  house  is 
prohibited  by  law. 

Meanwhile,  every  tenement-house  sliop  is  ruinous  to 
the  health  of  the  employees.  Basement  shops  are 
damp,  and  entail  rheumatism.  They  never  afford  proper 
accommodations  for  the  pressers,  the  fumes  of  whose 
gasoline  stoves  and  charcoal  heaters  mingle  with  the 
mouldy  smell  of  the  walls  and  the  stuffiness  always 
found  where  a  number  of  the  very  poor  are  crowded 
together.  The  light  in  basement  shops  is  bad,  and  they 
are  colder  in  winter  and  hotter  in  summer  than  work- 
rooms in  ordinary  factories. 

Attic  shops  are  hot  in  summer,  and  usually  foul  by 
reason  of  the  presence  of  closets  to  whicli  the  water 
does  not  rise.     As  these  shops  are  often  on  the  fifth 


36  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

floor  of  crowded  tenement  houses,  with  narrow  Avooden 
stairs,  no  fire-escapes,  and  no  sufficient  water  supply, 
the  danger  of  death  by  fire  is  greatly  aggravated  by  the 
omnipresent  presser's  stove.  Shops  on  the  middle  floors 
are  ill-lighted,  ill-ventilated,  and  share  the  smell  from 
the  kitchens  and  drains  of  surrounding  tenement  flats. 

The  dye  from  cheap  cloth  goods  is  sometimes  poison- 
ous to  the  skin  ;  and  the  fluff  from  such  goods  inhaled  by 
the  operators  is  excessively  irritating  to  the  membranes, 
and  gives  rise  to  inflammations  of  the  eye  and  various 
forms  of  catarrh.  All  these  conditions,  taken  together 
with  the  exhaustion  consequent  upon  driving  foot-power 
machines  at  the  highest  possible  rate  of  speed,  make  con- 
sumption, either  of  the  lung  or  intestine,  the  character- 
istic malady  of  the  sweaters'  victim. 

In  the  minds  of  the  physicians,  nurses,  and  inspectors 
best  acquainted  Avitli  the  sweaters'  victims  of  the  nine- 
teenth ward,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  siibstitution  of 
steam-power  for  foot-power  would  do  more  to  change 
this  medical  aspect  of  the  case  than  any  other  one 
change  that  could  be  made.  This  is,  however,  entirely 
hopeless  until  tenement-house  manufacture  is  prohibited, 
^eanwhile,  the  trade  life  of  the  garment  worker  is  prol> 
ably  shorter  than  prevails  in  any  other  occupation  ;j  and 
the  employees  are  always  on  the  verge  of  pauperism, 
and  fall  into  the  abyss  with  every  illness  or  particularly 
bad  season. 

If  the  sweaters'  victim  or  any  member  of  his  famil}* 
fall  ill,  his  only  hope  is  in  the  county  doctor  and  the 
visiting  nurse  supported  by  charity,  unless  the  patient 
be  taken  outright  to  the  Michael  Eeese  or  County  Hos- 
pital.    If  the  illness  prove  a  long  one,  recourse    must 


THE  SWEATIXG-SYSTEM.  37 

be  had  to  the  various  charities ;  and  death  brings  a 
funeral  ending  in  the  potter's  field,  unless  some  prosper- 
ous brother  of  the  faith  provide  for  ])rivate  burial. 

A  typical  example  is  the  experience  of  a  cloakmaker 
who  began  work  at  his  machine  in  this  ward  at  the  age 
of  fourteen  years,  and  was  found,  after  twenty  years  of 
temperate  life  and  faithful  work,  living  in  a  rear  base- 
ment, with  four  of  his  children  apparently  dying  of 
pneumonia,  at  the  close  of  a  winter  during  which  they 
had  had,  for  weeks  together,  no  food  but  bread  and 
water,  and  had  been  four  days  without  bread.  The  visit- 
ing nurse  had  two  of  the  children  removed  to  a  hospital, 
and  nursed  the  other  two  safely  through  their  illness, 
feeding  the  entire  family  nearly  four  months.  Place 
after  place  was  found  for  the  father ;  but  he  was  too 
feeble  to  be  of  value  to  any  sweater,  and  was  constantly 
told  that  he  was  not  worth  the  room  he  took  up.  A 
place  being  found  for  him  in  charge  of  an  elevator,  he 
could  not  stand ;  and  two  competent  physicians,  after  a 
careful  examination,  agreed  that  he  was  suffering  from 
old  age.  Twenty  years  at  a  machine  had  made  him  an 
old  man  at  thirty-four.  During  these  twenty  years  his 
earnings  had  ranged  from  3260  to  $300  per  annum. 

Even  without  illness  in  his  family,  the  sweaters'  vic- 
tim is  regularly  a  pauper  during  a  part  of  the  year. 
The  two  seasons  of  the  trade  in  each  year  are  followed 
V)y  long  pauses,  during  which  nothing  can  be  earned,  and 
debts  are  incurred.  If  the  "  slack  "  season  is  phenome- 
nally short,  in  a  year  of  unusual  commercial  prosperity, 
the  sweaters'  victim  may  perhaps  live  through  it,  by 
means  of  the  credit  given  him  by  the  landlord  and 
grocer,  without  applying  for  aid  to  the  Charities  or  the 


38  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

County  Kelief.  But  in  the  ordinary  years  of  merely 
average  prosperity,  the  sweaters'  victim  is  inevitably 
an  applicant  for  relief,  to  supplement,  during  three  to 
five  months,  the  earnings  made  during  the  busy  season. 

This  fact  effectively  disposes  of  the  favorite  human- 
itarian argument  on  behalf  of  tenement-house  manufac- 
ture ;  namely,  that  widows  with  children  to  support 
must  be  permitted  to  work  at  home.  Even  if  these 
Avidows  made  a  sufficient  living  for  themselves  and  their 
children,  the  price  paid  for  their  prosperity,  in  the 
spread  of  disease  and  the  demoralization  of  a  vast  trade, 
might  be  considered  exorbitant.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  no  tenement-house  garment  maker  earns  a  suf- 
ficient living  for  a  family,  least  of  all  the  widow  whose 
housework  and  care  of  her  children  interrupt  her  sew- 
ing, and  whose  very  necessities  are  exploited  by  the 
sweater  in  his  doling  out  of  work  and  pay.  What  we 
really  get  in  the  case  of  the  widow  is  the  worst  conceiv- 
able form  of  tenement-house  manufacture,  with  full- 
fledged  pauperism  thrown  into  the  bargain. 

V^t  is  preposterous,  on  the  face  of  it,  that  a  trade  em- 
ploying from  25,000  to  30,000  persons  in  a  single  city, 
with  an  annual  output  of  many  millions  of  dollars, 
should  be  carried  on  with  the  same  primitive  machines 
which  were  used  thirty  years  ago.  In  every  other 
branch  of  manufacture  the  watchword  of  the  present 
generation  has  been  concentration.  ^ Everywhere  steam, 
electricity,  and  human  ingenuity  have  been  pressed  into 
service  for  the  purpose  of  organization  and  centraliza- 
tion; but  in  the  garment  trades  this  process  has  been 
reversed,  "^and  the  division  of  labor  has  been  made  a 
means  of  demoralization,  disorganization,  and  degrada- 


THE  SWEATIXG-SYSTEM.  39. 

tion,  carried  to  a  point  beyond  whic-li  it  is  impossible  to 
go.  While  the  textile  mills  in  Avhich  the  material  for 
garments  is  spnn  and  woven  have  been  constantly  en- 
larged and  improved,  both  as  to  the  machinery  used  and 
as  to  the  healthfuljiess  of  the  surroundings  of  the  Avork- 
people.  the  garment  trade  has  been  enriched  merely  by 
the  addition  of  the  buttonhole  machine ;  and  this  lone, 
lorn  improvement  has  been  made  the  means  of  deform- 
ing the  illiterate  children  employed  at  it  A 

Thirty  years  ago  the  shoemaker  atid  the  tailor  were 
more  or  less  equally  placed.  Each  went  through  the 
experience  of  the  apprentice,  the  journeyman,  the  master, 
working  for  a  limited  market,  and  more  or  less  in  per- 
sonal contact  with  the  individual  customer.  To-day  the 
shoe  industry  possesses  a  wealth  of  perfected  machinery, 
such  that  a  tanned  hide  can  be  carried  through  all  the 
processes  of  manufacture  under  a  single  roof  and  with 
incredible  speed.  The  shoemaker's  shop,  with  its  little 
group  of  workers,  has  become  the  shoemaking  town,  with 
a  vast  organization,  both  of  capital  and  of  labor,  and 
a  very  high  degree  of  intelligence  and  class  consciousness 
pervading  the  thousands  of  employees.  The  garment 
worker,  on  the  contrary,  still  works  in  his  kitchen,  per- 
haps with  the  aid  of  his  wife,  performing  one  of  the 
dozen  subdivisions  of  the  labor  of  making  garments. 
He  rarely  belongs  to  an  organization,  and  if  he  does  it  is 
so  weak  as  to  be  almost  useless  to  him  either  for  edu- 
cation or  defence.  If  he  is  an  "  all-round  garment 
worker,"  whatever  his  skill  may  be,  he  has  little  use  for 
it ;  since,  in  competition  with  him.  the  cutter  cuts,  the 
operator  stitches,  the  seam-binder  binds  seams,  the 
hand-girl    fells,    the    presser   presses,    the    buttonholcr 


40  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AXD  PAPERS. 

makes  buttonholes  by  the  thousand  gross.  Whatever 
the  disadvantages  of  the  division  of  labor,  the  garment 
worker  suffers  them  all.  Of  its  advantages  he  has  never 
had  a  taste. 

A  curious  example  of  the  isolation  of  the  garment 
worker  is  found  in  a  crowded  tenement  house  in  Ewing 
Street,  known  as  "  Poverty  Flat,"  where  live  different 
women  were  found  sewing,  each  in  her  own  kitchen,  five 
different  bundles  of  knee-pants  for  the  same  sweater. 
The  knee-pants  were  of  the  same  size  and  quality,  with 
the  same  amount  of  work  to  be  done  i;pon  them ;  but 
the  prices  paid  were  five  cents,  seven  cents,  nine  cents, 
eleven  and  thirteen  cents  per  dozen,  rising  in  accordance 
with  the  skill  in  haggling  of  the  home  finisher,  and  with 
no  relation  to  her  skill  in  sewing  on  buttons. 

A  millionnaire  philanthropist,  at  the  head  of  one  of 
the  largest  clothing-houses  in  the  world,  was  once  asked 
why  he  did  not  employ  directly  the  people  who  made 
his  goods,  and  furnish  them  with  steam-yjower,  thus 
saving  a  heavy  drain  u.pon  their  health,  and  reducing 
the  number  of  sweaters'  victims  found  every  winter  in 
his  pet  hospital.  "  So  far,"  he  replied,  "  we  have  found 
leg-poAver  and  the  sweater  cheaper." 

In  the  shoe  industry  the  products  have  been  cheap- 
ened by  developing  the  plant,  perfecting  the  machinery, 
and  employing  relatively  well-paid,  high-grade  lai»or. 
In  the  garment  trade  there  is  no  plant.  Under  the 
sweating-system,  with  the  foot-power  sewing-machine, 
cheapness  is  attained  solely  at  the  cost  of  the  victim. 
Even  the  inside  shops  are  often  located  in  rented 
quarters,  and  frequently  the  operator  is  required  to 
supply  his  own  machine,  or  to  pay  the  rent  of  a  hired 


THE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  41 

one ;  and  even  with  these  niggardly  provisions  the  man- 
ufacturers find  it  profitable  to  shift  the  burden  of  rent 
upon  the  sweaters,  who,  in  turn,  reduce  the  size  of  their 
shops  by  giving  out  garments  to  the  buttonholer  and  tlie 
home  finisher. 

The  intimate  connection  between  this  decentralization 
of  the  trade  and  the  danger  of  infecting  the  purchaser 
with  disease  prevalent  in  tenement-house  districts,  is  too 
palpable  to  need  comment,  and  emphasizes  the  question 
Avhy  the  clothing  manufacturer  should  be  permitted  to 
eliminate  the  item  of  rent  from  his  expenses,  at  the  cost 
of  the  trade  and  of  the  piu'chasing  community.  All  other 
manufacturers  have  to  include  rent  in  their  calculations, 
why  not  he  ? 

The  condition  of  the  sweaters'  victim  is  a  conclusive 
refutation  of  the  ubiquitous  argument  that  poverty  is  the 
result  of  crime,  vice,  intemperance,  sloth,  and  unthrift; 
for  the  Jewish  sweaters'  victims  are  probably  more  tem- 
perate, hard-working,  and  avaricious  than  any  equally 
large  body  of  wage-earners  in  America.  Drunkenness 
is  unknown  among  them.  So  great  is  their  eagerness  to 
improve  the  social  condition  of  their  children,  that  they 
willingly  suffer  the  utmost  privation  of  clothing,  food, 
and  lodging,  for  the  sake  of  keeping  their  boys  in 
school.  Yet  the  reward  of  work  at  their  trade  is  grind- 
ing poverty,  ending  only  in  death  or  escape  to  some 
more  hopeful  occupation.  Within  the  trade  there  has 
been  and  can  be  no  improvement  in  wages  while  tene- 
ment-house manufacture  is  tolerated.  On  the  contrary, 
there  seems  to  be  no  limit  to  the  deterioration  now  in 
progress. 


42  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPEBS. 


MERCHANT    TAILORS. 

It  is  a  fact  of  which  the  public  has  remained  curi- 
ously ignorant,  that  the  worst  forms  of  danger  to  the 
wearers  of  garments  are  found  in  heavier  proportion  in 
the  manufacture  of  expensive  custom-made  clothing  than 
in  the  ready-made  clothing  trade ;  since  there  are  no  in- 
side factories  for  the  manufacture  of  custom-made  cloth- 
ing, and  merchant  tailors  employ  only  cutters  on  their 
premises,  and  never  have  any  garments  completed  there, 
but  always  give  them  out  to  be  finished  in  the  sweater- 
shoi3,  or  in  the  individual  tailor's  own  home. 

Throughout  the  agitation  carried  on  for  some  years 
past  against  the  sweating-system,  the  merchant  tailors 
have  enjoyed  a  wholly  undeserved  immunity  from  the 
accusation  of  spreading  infectious  and  contagious  dis- 
ease by  means  of  the  tenement-house  manufacture  of 
garments.  A  striking  example  may  serve  to  illustrate 
the  point.  I  have  myself  found  on  Bunker  Street  a 
brick  tenement  house  filled  with  Bohemian  and  Jewish 
tenants  engaged  in  the  tailoring  trade  and  in  peddling. 
In  the  ground  floor,  front  flat,  which  was  exceedingly 
clean,  I  found  a  tailor  at  work  one  Sunday  afternoon 
upon  a  broadcloth  dress-coat  belonging  to  an  evening 
suit  of  the  finest  quality,  s,uch  as  sell  for  from  $70  to 
$100.  On  a  bed  about  five  feet  from  the  table  at  which 
the  tailor  was  working,  his  son  lay  dying  of  typhoid- 
fever.  The  boy  died  on  the  following  day ;  and  the  coat 
when  finished  was  returned  to  the  merchant  tailor,  and 
delivered  to  the  customer  without  fumigation  or  other 
precaiition.  Tliis  was  before  the  passage  of  the  pres- 
ent factory  law,  and   at  a  time  when  no  authority  of 


THE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  43 

the  State  of  Illinois  had  power  to  interfere  in  such  a 
case. 

Even  where  the  home  tailor,  by  twenty  years  of  work, 
has  come  to  own  his  house,  this  prosperity  is  no  guar- 
anty of  clean  goods  for  the  purchaser.  At  135  Forquer 
Street,  there  stands  a  two-story  frame  building  swarming 
with  Russian,  Jewish,  and  Italian  families,  the  ground 
floor  occupied  by  a  most  disorderly  and  repulsive  gro- 
cery. The  premises  belong  to  a  tailor  who  lives  in  a 
shanty  in  the  rear,  where  his  old  mother,  dying  of 
cancer,  occupies  a  bed  in  the  kitchen,  in  which  this 
landlord  has  been  repeatedly  found  working  with  his 
wife  upon  uniforms  for  the  officers  of  the  Chicago  police 
and  the  Illinois  militia,  while  his  children  and  a  number 
of  chickens  swarmed  upon  the  floor.  This  man,  after 
nineteen  years  of  instalment  payments  upon  his  prop- 
erty, is  still  guilty  of  all  the  vices  of  thrift,  in  the  hope 
of  finally  lifting  the  mortgage  indebtedness  during  the 
present  year. 

LAW. 

The  sweating-system  in  Chicago  has  been  a  subject  of 
investigation  since  1891,  Avhen  ]\Irs.  Thomas  J.  Morgan, 
on  behalf  of  the  Chicago  Trades  and  Labor  Assembly, 
made  the  first  inspection  that  attracted  public  attention  ' 
to  the  subject,  upon  the  publication  in  pamphlet  form  of 
the  results  of  her  investigations. 

From  1891  to  the  passage  of  the  law  of  1893  under 
the  leadership  of  Hull  House,  the  organizations  of  gar- 
ment workers,  including  the  shirtmakers,  the  men's 
shop-tailors'  union,  the  women's  protective  union  of 
cloakmakers,  the  custom-tailors'  union,  the  cloakmakers 
and  the  shoemakers,  kept  up  an  unwearied  agitation  for 


44  HULL-UOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

the  abolition  by  law  of  the  sweating-system,  and  obtained 
results  proportioned  to  their  good  tactics,  zeal,  and  en- 
ergy, rather  than  to  their  numbers. 

They  urged  on  every  public  occasion  that  tenement- 
house  manufacture  is  a  public  injury  ;  and  they  availed 
themselves  of  the  solidarity  of  the  unions  throughout  the 
State,  to  bring  the  facts  of  the  case  home  to  legislators 
with  the  emphasis  of  the  labor  vote.  Their  claim  on 
behalf  of  the  public  health  is  an  unanswerable  one ;  and 
their  appeal  for  themselves,  in  their  effort  to  place  the 
garment  trades  upon  the  same  modern  business  basis  as 
the  factory  trades,  finds  ready  response  in  the  minds 
of  intelligent  people.  Opposition  to  legislation  looking 
towards  the  abolition  of  the  sweating-system  came  from 
the  manufacturers,  less  than  one  hundred  in  number, 
whose  interests  are  affected,  and  from  a  few  kind-hearted 
persons  apprehensive  of  possible  injury  to  the  home  fin- 
ishing widow,  because  they  do  not  know  her  well  enough 
to  judge  correctly  her  present  irreparable  situation. 

In  July,  1893,  the  present  Workshop  and  Factories 
Act  went  into  effect,  and  this  essay  is  w^ritten  after  eight 
months  of  effort  to  enforce  it.  The  results  obtained 
may  be  briefly  summed  up  as  consisting  of  the  reduction 
in  number  of  the  small  children  in  shops ;  the  partially 
successful  separation  of  the  homes  from  the  shops,  and 
the  partially  successful  enforcement  of  the  eight-hour 
day  for  the  women  and  girls.  These  results  are  not 
wholly  unsatisfactory,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  law 
is  not  yet  a  year  old;  but  they  indicate  that  this  initial, 
tentative  measure  is  inadequate  for  the  eifective  protec- 
tion of  the  health  of  either  the  public  or  the  employees 
of  the  garment  trades.     Its  chief  value  lies  in  its  use  as 


/ 


THE  SWEATING-SYSTEM.  45 

a  transition  measure,  paving  the  way  for  the  abolition  of 
tenement-house  manufacture. 

This  shoukl  be  a  comparatively  easy  matter  in  a  new 
city  Avhere  there  is  no  long-standing  tradition  of  genera- 
tions of  handloom  weaving  in  the  worker's  home,  or  in- 
deed of  home  manufacture  of  any  sort.  In  Chicago, 
where  all  industry  is  on  a  large  scale,  and  the  cheajD  land 
available  for  building  factories  is  ample,  there  is  not 
even  the  excuse  afforded  by  the  traditions  of  London  or 
the  overcrowding  of  Manhattan  Island.  If  we  tolerate 
tenement-house  manufacture,  we  do  so  in  the  face  of  the 
experience  of  older  cities,  and  in  spite  of  industrial  con- 
ditions which  invite  us  to  its  abolition. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Pamphlet  on  the  Sweating-System,  published  by  the  Chicago 
Trades  Assembly,  1892. 

Investigation  of  the  Sweating-System  by  Committee  of  the 
United  States  House  of  Representatives,  Sherman  Hoar,  Chair- 
man, 1892. 

Report  of  Illinois  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  1892. 

Report  Joint  Special  Committee  Senate  and  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives of  Illinois  to  Investigate  the  Sweating-System  in 
Chicago,  March  1,  1893. 

Reports  State  Factory  Inspectors  of  Illinois. 


III. 

WAGE-EARNING    CHILDREN. 


WAGE-EARNING  CHILDREN. 

BY    FLOREXOE    KKLLKY    AXD    ALZIXA    P.    STEVEXS, 

State  Inspector  and  Assistant   Inspector  of  Works/tops  and  Factories  for 
Illinois. 

Is  a  discussion  of  child-labor  in  Chicago,  it  may  sim- 
plify matters  to  point  out,  at  the  outset,  what  things 
are  not  to  be  looked  for.  Thus,  there  is  in  Chicago  vir- 
tually no  textile  industry ;  and  the  cotton-mill  child  of 
Massachusetts,  or  the  carpet-mill  child  of  Philadelphia, 
has  no  counterpart  here.  There  is  iio  industry  in  which, 
as  in  the  spinning  and  weaving  of  silk,  the  deft  fingers 
of  young  children  have  been  for  generations  regarded  as 
essential.  With  the  large  exception  of  the  cigar,  to- 
bacco, and  paper  trades  (including  both  the  manufacture 
of  paper  boxes  and  the  printing  and  binding  industries), 
and  with  the  further  exception  of  the  utterly  disorgan- 
ized and  demoralized  garment  trades,  the  industries  of 
Illinois  are  essentially  men's  trades.  The  wood,  metal, 
and  food  industries  employ  a  heavy  majority  of  men. 
The  vast  army  of  fathers  employed  in  transportation 
and  in  the  building-trades  demand,  and  as  a  rule  obtain, 
wages  sufficient  to  support  their  young  children,  who 
are  therefore  not  crowded  into  factories.  As  the  work 
of  factory  inspection  in  the  State  is  of  extremely  recent 
date,  and  the  inspection  records  are  of  less  than  a  year's 
standing,  it  is  impossible  to  trace  the  growth  of  child- 
labor  in  Chicago.  Its  status  has,  however,  been  care- 
fully investigated  during  the  present  year. 

49 


50  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

The  census  of  1880  gave  the  total  number  of  wage- 
earning  children  in  the  United  States  in  all  occupations 
and  industries  as  1,118,258.  The  census  of  1890,  in 
sections  devoted  to  "  Statistics  of  Manufactures,"  gives 
returns  upon  child-labor  in  this  division  of  industry, 
some  of  -which  will  be  used  in  this  essay.  Before  any 
of  these  are  quoted,  the  reader  must  be  warned  that  cen- 
sus figures  upon  the  employment  of  children  are  inva- 
riably too  low.  They  are  here  used  merely  as  a  basis 
for  comparison.  The  method  by  which  statistics  of  em- 
ployees are  gathered,  leaves  it  possible  for  employers 
and  parents  to  make  false  returns  concerning  children. 
Inclination  and  interest  prompt  both  to  "  raise  "  the  age 
of  the  child  at  work ;  and  most  employers  are  so  far 
ashamed  of  the  practice  of  employing  children,  that  each 
returns  less  than  the  actual  number.  All  persons  who 
have  been  officially  engaged  under  municipal.  State,  or 
national  authority,  in  gathering  statistics  of  the  em- 
ployed, know  that  this  is  true. 

In  the  census  bulletin  upon  manufactures  of  1890, 
the  total  number  of  employees  in  the  United  States,  of 
both  sexes  and  all  ages,  is  given  as  4,711,831 ;  the  total 
number  of  children  as  121,494,  or  a  little  more  than 
three  per  cent  of  all  employed.  In  census  reports, 
"  children "  are  all  males  under  sixteen  years,  and  all 
females  under  fifteen  years.  The  table  giving  manu- 
factures by  States  shows  that  it  is  not  where  labor 
is  scarce,  but  where  competition  for  work  is  keenest, 
that  the  per  cent  of  children  is  largest  in  the  total  number 
employed.  Thus,  5  children  are  credited  to  Wyoming; 
9  to  Arizona ;  1  only  to  Nevada ;  while  Pennsylvania 
has  22,417;  New  York,  12,413;   Massachusetts,  8,877. 


WAGE-EARNING   CHILDREN.  61 

Certainly  tlie  older  and  densely  poi)ulated  States  report 
on  a  greater  number  of  establishments  and  employees ; 
but  that  does  not  affect  the  comparison  between  States 
as  to  the  ratio  of  children  to  adults.  For  example :  the 
Nevada  report  is  upon  95  establishments,  employing  G20 
persons,  only  one  a  child  ;  while  Pennsylvania's  report  is 
upon  39,oGG  establishments,  employing  020,484  persons, 
of  whom  22,417  — or  about  one  in  23  —  are  children. 

CIIILD-LABOK    AND    TIIP:    ILLINOIS    LAW. 

The  Illinois  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  established 
in  1879,  which  has  issued  seven  biennial  reports,  has 
never  furnished  any  information  relative  to  the  employ- 
ment of  children  in  the  State.  The  Workshop  and  Fac- 
tories Act  was  enacted  by  the  Thirty-Eighth  General 
Assembly,  and  received  the  signature  of  Governor  Alt- 
geld  on  July  1,  1893.  It  provided  for  the  appointment 
of  an  inspector,  assistant  inspector,  and  ten  deputy  in- 
spectors, five  of  whom  should  be  women ;  and  it  requires 
an  aniuial  report  of  their  work,  to  be  submitted  to  the 
governor  of  the  State  on  December  15.  From  the  first 
official  report,  which  covers  the  five  months  between 
July  15  and  December  15,  1893,  the  statistics  used  in 
this  paper  concerning  working  children  in  this  State  are 
taken. 

The  census  of  1890  reports  20.482  manufacturing 
establishments  in  the  State,  and  gives  the  total  num- 
ber of  children  employed  in  them  as  5,420.  In  five 
months'  work  in  1894  we  found  0,570  children  in  2,452 
establishments  employing  08,081  persons,  or  about  1  in 
10^  so  employed,  a  reason  for  once  more  challenging 
census  figures  ;  although  in  our  work  girls  under  sixteen, 


62  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

as  Avell  as  boys,  are  counted  cliildren.  It  Avill  be  remem- 
bered that  the  census  returns  phace  girls  over  fifteen 
years  among  adults,  but  reckon  boys  as  children  until 
sixteen  years. 

The  sections  of  the  Illinois  law  regulating  the  employ- 
ment of  children  are  the  following  :  — 

§  4.  Xo  child  untlor  fourteen  years  of  age  shall  be  employed 
in  any  manufacturing  establishment,  factory,  or  workshop  Mithin 
this  State.  It  shall  be  the  duty  of  every  person,  firm,  corpora- 
tion, agent,  or  manager  of  any  corporation  employing  children,  to 
keep  a  register  in  which  shall  be  recorded  the  name,  birthplace, 
age,  and  place  of  residence  of  every  person  employed  by  him, 
them,  or  it,  iinder  the  age  of  sixteen  years  ;  and  it  shall  be  un- 
lawful for  any  person,  firm,  or  corporation,  or  any  agent  or 
manager  of  any  corporation,  to  hire  or  employ  in  any  manufac- 
turing establishment,  factory,  or  workshop,  any  child  over  the 
age  of  fourteen  years  and  under  the  age  of  sixteen  years,  unless 
there  is  first  provided  and  placed  on  file  an  affidavit  made  by  the 
parent  or  guardian,  stating  the  age,  date,  and  place  of  birth  of 
said  child  ;  if  said  child  have  no  parent  or  guardian,  then  sucTi 
affidavit  shall  be  made  by  the  child,  which  affidavit  shall  be  kept 
on  file  by  the  employer,  and  which  said  register  and  affidavit  shall 
be  produced  for  inspection  on  demand  by  the  inspector,  assistant 
inspector,  or  any  of  the  deputies  appointed  under  this  act.  The 
factory  inspector,  assistant  inspector,  and  deputy  insi>ectors  shall 
have  poM'er  to  demand  a  certificate  of  physical  fitness  from  some 
regular  physician  of  good  standing  in  case  of  children  who  may 
appear  to  him  or  her  physically  unable  to  perform  the  labor  at 
which  they  may  be  engaged,  and  shall  have  power  to  prohibit 
the  employment  of  any  minor  that  cannot  obtain  such  a  certificate. 

§  5.  No  female  shall  be  employed  in  any  factory  or  workshop 
more  than  eight  hours  in  any  one  day,  or  forty-eight  hours  in  any 
one  week. 

§  6.  Every  person,  firm,  or  corporation,  agent  or  manager  of  a 
corporation,  employing  any  female  in  any  manufacturing  estab- 
lishment, factory,  or  workshop,  shall  post  and  keep  posted  in  a 


WAGE-EARXIXG    ClIILDIiEX.  53 

conspicuous  place  in  every  room  where  such  help  is  employed,  a 
printed  notice  stating  the  hours  for  each  day  of  the  week  between 
which  work  is  required  of  such  persons  ;  and  in  every  room  where 
children  under  sixteen  years  of  age  are  employed  a  list  of  their 
names,  ages,  and  places  of  residence. 

An  immediate  good  result  from  the  enforcement  of 
§  4  was  that  several  hundred  children  under  fourteen 
years  of  age  were  taken  from  the  factories  after  the 
opening  of  the  school  year,  September  1.  In  Chicago,  a 
daily  report  of  these  children,  giving  their  names,  ages, 
and  places  of  residence,  Avas  forwarded  to  the  compul- 
sory department  of  the  Board  of  Education,  that  truant- 
officers  might  see  that  the  children  did  not  go  from  the 
factory  to  the  street,  but  to  school.  In  "  hardship " 
cases,  where  there  was  extreme  poverty  in  the  child's 
family,  appeal  was  made  for  the  child  by  the  inspector 
to  the  School-Children's  Aid  Society,  or  some  kindred 
organization.^  Before  the  law  of  1893  took  effect,  chil- 
dren seeking  v.ork  in  Chicago  secured  from  the  city 
Board  of  Education  permits,  the  purport  of  which  Avas 
that,  for  reasons  deemed  sufficient,  the  child  was  granted 
permission  to  work  under  fourteen  years  of  age.  As  these 
permits  were  secured  on  the  mere  statement  of  child  or 
parent,  false  statements  were  common  ;  and  we  therefore 
found  hundreds  of  children  in  factories  who  ought  to 
have  been  in  school.  The  law  of  1893  applying  only  to 
workshops  and  factories,  the  Board  of  Education  still 
issues  permits  for  children  under  fourteen  years  of  age 
to  work  in  other  than  manufacturing  occupations. 

A  second  good  result  from  our  system  of  handling 

*  No  good  result  liaving  followed  these  appeals,  they  are  no 
longer  made  [18iW]. 


54  UULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

affidavits,  and  the  requirements  of  the  law  regarding 
office  registers  and  wall  records,  is  that  the  number  of 
children  employed  between  the  ages  of  fovxrteen  and 
sixteen  years  is  somewhat  reduced.  Many  children  to 
whom  age  affidavits  were  issued  in  the  first  months  of 
our  work,  were  found  to  have  been  employed  two,  three, 
and  four  years,  although  not  yet  sixteen.  To-day  no 
employer  in  workshop  or  factory  in  Chicago  wittingly 
puts  to  work  a  child  under  fourteen  years  of  age,  and 
some  employers  are  refusing  to  hire  any  boy  or  girl  who 
has  not  passed  the  age  of  sixteen.  They  "will  not  be 
bothered,"  they  say,  with  employees  who  come  under 
§§4  and  6  of  the  law. 

THE    WORKING    CHILD    OF    THE    NINETEEXTH    WARD. 

The  Nineteenth  Ward  of  Chicago  is  perhaps  the  best 
district  in  all  Illinois  for  a  detailed  study  of  child-labor, 
both  because  it  contains  many  factories  in  which  chil- 
dren are  employed,  and  because  it  is  the  dwelling-place 
of  wage-earning  children  engaged  in  all  lines  of  activity. 

The  Ewing  Street  Italian  colony  furnishes  a  large 
contingent  to  the  army  of  bootblacks  and  newsboys ; 
lads  who  leave  home  at  2.30  a.m.  to  secure  the  first 
edition  of  the  morning  paper,  selling  each  edition  as  it 
appears,  and  filling  the  intervals  with  blacking  boots 
and  tossing  pennies,  until,  in  the  winter  half  of  the  year, 
they  gather  in  the  Polk  Street  Night-School,  to  doze  in 
the  warmth,  or  torture  the  teacher  with  the  gamin  tricks 
acquired  by  day.  For  them,  school  is  "a  lark,"  or  a 
peaceful  retreat  from  parental  beatings  and  shrieking 
juniors  at  home  during  the  bitter  nights  of  the  Chicago 
winter. 


WAGE-EARNING   CHILDREN.  65 

There  is  no  body  of  self-supporting  chiklreii  more  in 
need  of  effective  care  llian  tliese  newsboys  and  boot- 
blacks. They  are  ill-fed,  ill-housed,  ill-clothed,  illiterate, 
and  wholly  untrainetl  and  unfitted  for  any  occupation. 
The  only  useful  thing  they  learn  at  their  work  in  com- 
mon with  the  children  who  learn  in  school,  is  the  rapid 
calculation  of  small  sums  in  making  change ;  and  this 
does  not  go  far  enough  to  be  of  any  practical  value.  In 
the  absence  of  an  effective  compulsory  school-attendance 
law,  they  should  at  least  be  required  to  obtain  a  license 
from  the  city ;  and  the  granting  of  this  license  should 
be  in  the  hands  of  the  Board  of  Education,  and  contin- 
gent upon  a  certain  amount  of  da3'-school  attendance 
accomplished. 

In  this  ward  dwells,  also,  a  large  body  of  cash-chil- 
dren, boys  and  girls.  Their  situation  is  illustrated  by 
the  Christmas  experience  of  one  of  their  number.  A 
little  girl,  thirteen  years  of  age,  saw  in  an  evening  paper 
of  December  23d  last,  an  advertisement  for  six  girls  to 
work  in  one  of  the  best-known  candy  stores,  candidates 
to  apply  at  seven  o'clock  the  next  morning,  at  a  branch 
store  on  the  West  Side,  one  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
child's  home.  To  reach  the  place  in  time,  she  spent 
five  cents  of  her  lunch  money  for  car-fare.  Arriving, 
she  found  other  children,  while  but  one  was  wanted. 
She  was  engaged  as  the  brightest  of  the  group,  and  sent 
to  a  down-town  branch  of  the  establishment,  at  a  dis- 
tance of  two  and  a  qiiarter  miles.  This  time  she  walked  ; 
then  worked  till  midnight,  paying  for  her  dinner,  and 
going  without  supper.  She  was  paid  fifty  cents,  and 
discharged  with  the  explanation  that  she  was  only  re- 
quired for  one  day.     Xo  cars  were  running  at  that  hour, 


56  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPEliS. 

and  the  little  girl  walked  across  the  worst  district  of 
Chicago,  to  reach  her  home  and  her  terrified  mother  at 
one  o'clock  on  Christmas  morning.^  No  law  Avas  violated 
in  this  transaction,  as  mercantile  establishments  are  not 
yet  subject  to  the  provisions  of  the  factory  act. 

Fortunately  the  development  of  the  pneumatic  tube 
has  begun  to  supersede  the  cash-children  in  the  more 
respectable  of  the  retail  stores  ;  and  a  movement  for  ex- 
tending the  workshop  law  to  the  mercantile  establish- 
ments would,  therefore,  meet  with  less  opposition  now 
than  at  any  previous  time.  The  need  for  this  legisla- 
tion will  be  acknowledged  by  every  person  who  will 
stand  on  any  one  of  the  main  thoroughfares  of  Chicago 
on  a  morning  between  6.30  and  7.30  o'clock,  and  watch 
the  processions  of  puny  children  filing  into  the  dry- 
goods  emporiums  to  run,  during  nine  or  ten  hours,  and 
in  holiday  seasons  twelve  and  thirteen  hours,  a  daj^  to 
the  cry,  "  Cash  ! " 

In  the  stores  on  the  West  Side,  large  numbers  of 
young  girls  are  employed  thirteen  hours  a  day  through- 
out the  Aveek,  and  fifteen  hours  on  Saturday ;  and  all 
efforts  of  the  clothing-clerks  to  shorten  the  working- 
time  by  trade-union  methods  have  hitherto  availed 
but  little.  While  the  feeble  unions  of  garment-makers 
have  addressed  tliemselves  to  the  legislature,  and  ob- 
tained a  valuable  initial  measure  of  protection  for  the 
young  garment-workers,  the  retail-clerks,  depending  upon 
public  opinion  and  local  ordinances,  have  accomplished 
little  on  behalf  of  the  younger  clothing-sellers. 

In  dealing  Avith  ncAVsboys,  bootblacks,  and  cash-chil- 

1  Incidentally  it  is  of  interest  that  this  firm  was  one  of  the  most 
liberal  givers  of  Christmas  candy  to  the  poor. 


WAGE-EAliXIXG    CHILDREN.  57 

dren,  we  have  been  concerned  with  those  who  live  iu 
the  nineteenth  ward,  and  work  perhaps  there  or  perhaps 
elsewhere.  We  come  now  to  the  children  who  work  in 
the  factories  of  the  nineteenth  ward. 

The  largest  number  of  children<to  be  found  in  any  one 
factory  in  Chicago  is  in  a  caraip^l  works  in  this  ward, 
where  there  are  from  one  hiimlred  and  ten  to  two  hun- 
dred little  girls,  four  to  twelve  boys,  and  seventy  to  one 
hundred  adults,  according  to  the  season  of  the  year. 
The  building  is  a  six-story  brick,  well  lighted,  with  good 
plunjl)ing  and  fair  ventilation.  It  has,  however,  no  fire- 
escape,  and  a  single  wooden  stair  leading  from  floor  to 
floor.  In  case  of  fire  the  inevitable  fate  of  the  children 
working  on  the  two  upper  floors  is  too  horrible  to  con- 
template. The  box  factory  is  on  the  fifth  floor,  and  the 
heaviest  pressure  of  steam  used  in  boiling  the  caramels 
is  all  on  the  top  floor.  The  little  girls  sit  closely  packed 
at  long  tables,  Avrapping  and  packing  the  caramels. 
They  are  paid  by  the  piece,  and  the  number  of  pennies 
per  thousand  paid  is  just  enough  to  attract  the  most 
ignorant  and  helpless  children  in  the  city.^  Previous  to 
the  passage  of  the  factory  law  of  1893,  it  was  the  rule 
of  this  factory  to  work  the  children,  for  several  weeks 

*  The  affidavits  of  the  chiUlren  afford  an  astonisliiiig  collection  of 
unpronounceable  names,  Polisli  and  Bohemian  combinations  of  con- 
sonants, intersi)ersed  \vitli  Smith.  As  there  is  rarely  an  En<;lish- 
speakiug  child  in  tliis  factory,  the  prevalence  of  the  Smiths  was  a 
matter  of  perplexity,  until  it  transpired  that  notaries,  troubled  by  the 
foreign  orthography,  suggest  that  the  children  call  themselves  by  a 
more  manageable  name.  This  widespread  custom  greatly  increases 
the  ditticulty  of  prosecutions  for  violation  of  the  factory  law  in  estab- 
lishments in  wliich  the  employees  are  drawn  from  the  foreign  colonies. 
And  in  the  caramel  works,  with  its  polyglot  j)opulation,  the  work  of 
fitting  the  affidavits  to  the  children  is  as  laborious  as  it  is  absurd. 


58  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AXD   PAPERS. 

before  the  Christmas  holidays,  from  7  a.m.  to  9  p.m., 
with  twenty  minutes  for  liuich,  and  no  supper,  a  working- 
week  of  eighty-two  hours.  As  this  overtime  season  co- 
incided with  the  first  term  of  the- night-school,  the  chil- 
dren lost  their  one  op})ortunity.  Since  the  enactment 
of  the  factory  law,  their  working  week  has  consisted  of 
six  days  of  eight  hours  each  ;  a  reduction  of  thirty-four 
hours  a  week. 

HEALTH. 

It  is  a  lamentable  fact,  well  known  to  those  who 
have  investigated  child-labor,  that  children  are  found  in 
greatest  number  where  the  conditions  of  labor  are  most 
dangerous  to  life  and  health.  Among  the  occupations 
in  which  children  are  most  employed  in  Chicago,  and 
which  most  endanger  the  health,  are  :  The  tobacco  trade, 
nicotine  poisoning  finding  as  many  victims  among  fac- 
tory children  as  among  the  boys  who  are  voluntary 
devotees  of  the  weed,  consumers  of  the  deadly  cigarette 
included  ;  frame  gilding,  in  which  work  a  child's  fingers 
are  stiffened  and  throat  disease  is  contracted;  button- 
holing, machine-stitching,  and  hand-work  in  tailor  or 
sweat  shops,  the  machine-work  producing  spinal  curva- 
ture, and  for  girls  pelvic  disorders  also,  Avhile  the  un- 
sanitary condition  of  the  shops  makes  even  hand-serving 
dangerous  ;  bakeries,  Avhere  children  slowly  roast  before 
the  ovens ;  binderies,  paper-box  and  paint  factories, 
where  arsenical  paper,  rotting  paste,  and  the  poison  of 
the  paints  are  injurious ;  boiler-plate  works,  cutlery 
works,  and  metal-stamping  works,  where  the  dust  pro 
duces  lung  disease ;  the  handling  of  hot  metal,  acci- 
dents ;  the  hammering  of  plate,  deafness.  In  addition 
to  diseases  incidental  to  trades,  there  are  the  conditions. 


WAdE-EAUXIXG    CHILDUEN.  69 

of  bad  sanitation  and  lon^  hours,  almost  universal  in 
the  factories  where  children  are  employed. 

The  power  of  the  Illinois  inspectors,  so  far  as  they 
have  any  power  to  require  that  only  healthy  children 
shall  be  employed,  and  these  only  in  safe  and  healthy 
places,  is  found  in  §  4  of  the  Workshop  and  Factories 
Act,  the  last  clause,  already  quoted.  What  may  be 
accomplished  under  this  section  is  indicated  by  the 
following  report  concerning  medical  examinations  in  * 
the  inspector's  office,  made  for  the  boys  by  Dr.  Bayard 
Holmes,  of  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons ; 
and  for  the  girls  by  Dr.  Josephine  Milligan,  resident 
physician  at  Hull  House:  — 

During  four  months  1.35  factory  children  were  given 
medical  examinations  in  the  office.  The  inspectors 
required  these  children  to  secure  health  certificates  be- 
cause they  were  undersized,  or  seemed  to  be  ill,  or  were 
working  in  iinwholesome  shops,  or  at  dangerous  occupa- 
tions. They  were  children  sworn  by  their  parents  to 
be  fourteen  years  of  age,  or  over.^^ 

Each  child  Avas  weighed  Avith  and  without  clothing ; 
had  eyes  and  ears  tested  ;  heart,  lungs,  skin,  spine,  joints, 
and  nails  examined  ;  and  forty  measurements  taken. 

Of  the  135  children,  72  were  found  sufficiently  normal 
to  be  allowed  to  continue  work.  Of  the  (Jo  refused  cer- 
tificates, 53  were  not  allowed  to  work  at  all,  and  10 
were  stopped  working  at  unwholesome  trades,  as  tobacco- 
stripping,  grinding  in  cutlery  factory,  running  machines 
by  foot-power,  and  crimping  cans ;  these  were  advised 
to  look  for  more  wholesome  work. 

Of  those  to  whom  certificates  were  refused,  29  were 
undersized,    otherwise    normal  j    i.e.,    the    parents   had 


60  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

probably  forsworn  themselves  as  to  the  children's  ages. 
Certificates  were  refused  because  of  defects  to  34,  or 
26yV  per  cent  of  the  number  examined. 

Several  diseases  often  exist  in  the  same  child.  There 
were  14  children  with  spinal  curvatures,  12  with  heart 
murmurs,  6  with  lung  trouble,  24  with  eidarged  glands, 
25  with  defective  sight,  6  with  defective  hearing,  and 
56  with  defective  teeth. 

The  examination  of  girls  resulted  as  follows  :  — 

From  sweat-shops,  30  examined:  5  had  spinal  cnrvature;  1,  an 
organic  lesion  of  the  heart  (mitral  insutficieney);  2,  irritable 
hearts;  2   were   anaemic,   and  of   these   1   had  also  incipient 

•     phthisis. 

From  tobacco  factories,  11  examined:  1  had  spinal  curvature;  1, 
enlarged  glands  in  neck  and  axilla;  2,  defective  sight. 

From  baking-powder  factory,  8  examined:  1  had  sjjinal  curva- 
ture; 1,  enlarged  glands;  2,  defective  sight  and  slight  deafness; 
1  had  sore  hands  from  using  crimping-machine;  1  had  muti- 
lated forefinger  from  a  swedging-machine. 

From  feather-duster  factories,  7  examined:  2  had  enlarged  glands 
in  the  neck. 

From  gum  factory,  4  examined:  1  had  spinal  curvature. 

From  candy  factories,  16  examined:  2  had  diseases  of  the  skin. 

From  bookbinderies,  4  examined:  1  was  anaemic;  1  had  enlarged 
glands  in  the  neck. 

From  necktie  factory,  1  examined:  heart  murmur. 

From  j'east  factory,  1  examined:  normal. 

From  cracker  bakery,  1  examined :  undersized,  otherwise  normal. 

From  box  factory,  1  examined:  had  organic  lesion  of  the  heart. 

From  i^opcorn  factory,  1  examined:  antemic. 

Total  number  of  girls  examined,  85 ;  certificates 
granted,  50 ;  certificates  refused,  35. 

The  examination  of  boys  resulted  as  follows  :  — 

From  sweat-shops,  G  examined:  o  had  spinal  curvature;  1,  hernia; 
2,  enlarged  glands. 


WAGE-EARNING    CHILDREN.  61 

From  cutlery  factory,  12  examined:  5  hail  enlarged  glands;  3, 

tuberculosis;  2,  spinal  curvature. 
From  tobacco  factories,  0  examined:  4  had  enlarged  glands. 
From   metal-stamping   factories,   10  examined:   2  had   enlarged 

glands;  1,  bronchitis;  1,  tuberculosis;  1,  spinal  curvature;  1, 

syjihilis. 
From  picture-frame  factories,  3  examined:  1  was  anicmic  and 

had  enlarged  glands;  1,  tuberculosis. 
From  candy  factories,  2  examined:  1  had  skin  eruption. 
From  cracker  bakery,  1  examined:  had  phthisis. 
From  photographic  enlargement  shop,  1  examined:  was  anaemic 

and  scrofulous. 
From   glass-sign    shop,    shoe-shop,    cabinet-shop,   organ-factory, 

1  boy  in  each:  found  normal. 
Not  working,  2  examined:  found  normal. 

Total  number  of  boys  examined,  50 ;  certificates 
granted,  22 ;  certificates  refused,  28. 

This  record,  formed  in  four  months  by  volunteer  work 
done  by  two  busy  physicians  in  the  intervals  of  private 
pjractice,  indicates  an  appalling  deterioration  of  the 
rising  generation  of  the  wage-earning  class.  The  hu- 
man product  of  our  industry  is  an  army  of  toiling 
children,  undersized,  rachitic,  deformed,  predisposed  to 
consumption,  if  not  already  tuberculous.  Permanently 
enfeebled  by  the  labor  imposed  upon  them  during  the 
critical  years  of  development,  these  children  will  inevi- 
tably fail  in  the  early  years  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood. They  are  now  a  long  way  upon  the  road  to 
becoming  burdens  upon  society,  lifelong  victims  of  the 
poverty  of  their  childhood,  and  the  greed  which  sacri- 
fices the  sacred  right  of  children  to  school-life  and 
healthful  leisure. 

Of  the  reckless  employment  of  children  in  injurious 
occupations  the  following  are  examples  :  — - 


62  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

Jaroslav  Hiiptuk,  a  feeble-minded  dwarf,  whose  affida- 
vit shows  him  to  be  nearly  sixteen  years  of  age.  This 
child  weighed  and  measured  almost  exactly  the  same  as 
a  normal  boy  aged  eight  years  ain.*.  three  months.  Jaros- 
lav can  neither  read  nor  write  in  any  language,  nor  speak 
a  consecutive  sentence.  Besides  being  dwarfed,  he  is  so 
deformed  as  to  be  a  monstrosity.  Yet,  with  all  these 
disqualifications  for  any  kind  of  work,  he  has  been  em- 
ployed for  several  years  at  an  emery-wheel  in  a  cutlery 
works  in  the  nineteenth  ward,  finishing  knife-blades  and 
bone  handles,  until,  in  addition  to  his  other  misfortunes, 
he  is  now  tuberculous.  Dr.  Holmes,  having  examined 
this  boy,  pronounced  him  unfit  for  work  of  any  kind.  His 
mother  appealed  from  this  to  a  medical  college,  where, 
however,  the  examining  physician  not  only  refused  the 
lad  a  medical  certificate  of  physical  fitness  for  work,  but 
exhibited  him  to  the  students  as  a  monstrosity  worthy 
of  careful  observation. 

The  kind  of  grinding  at  which  this  boy  was  employed 
has  been  prohibited  in  England  for  minors  since  1863, 
by  reason  of  the  prevalence  of  grinders'  phthisis  among 
those  who  begin  the  work  young.  And  no  boy,  however 
free  from  Huptuk's  individual  disabilities,  can  grow  up 
a  strong  man  in  this  nineteenth  ward  cutlery,  because 
no  officer  of  the  State  can  require  the  walls  to  be  white- 
washed, and  the  grinding  and  finishing  rooms  to  be  ven- 
tilated with  suction  pipes  for  withdrawing  steel  and 
bone  dust  from  the  atmosphere,  as  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
English  inspectors  to  do  in  English  cutleries  employing 
only  adults. 

Joseph  Poderovsky,  aged  fourteen  years,  was  found  by 
a  deputy  inspector  running  a  heavy  buttonhole  machine 


WAGE-EARNING   CHILDREN.  G3 

by  foot-power  at  204  West  Taylor  Street,  in  the  shop  of 
Michael  Freeman.  The  child  was  required  to  report  for 
examination,  and  pronounced  by  the  examining  physi- 
cian, rachitic,  and  afflir.^^d  with  a  double  lateral  curvature 
of  the  spine.  He  was  ordered  discharged,  and  prohibited 
from  working  in  any  tailor-shop.  A  few  days  later  he 
Avas  found  at  work  at  the  same  machine.  A  warrant  was 
sworn  out  for  the  arrest  of  the  employer;  but  before  it 
could  be  served  the  man  left  the  State.  This  boy  has  a 
father  in  comfortable  circumstances,  and  two  adult  able- 
bodied  brothers. 

Bennie  Kelman,  Russian  Jew,  four  years  in  Chicago, 
was  found  running  a  heavy  sewing-machine  by  foot- 
power  in  a  sweat-shop  of  the  nineteenth  ward  where 
knee-pants  are  made.  A  health  certificate  was  required, 
and  the  medical  examination  revealed  a  severe  rupture. 
Careful  questioning  of  the  boy  and  his  mother  elicited 
the  fact  that  he  had  been  put  to  work  in  a  boiler  factory 
two  years  before,  when  just  thirteen  years  old,  and  had 
injured  himself  lifting  heavy  masses  of  iron.  Nothing 
had  been  done  for  the  case ;  no  one  in  the  family  spoke 
any  English,  or  knew  how  help  could  be  obtained.  The 
sight  test  showed  that  the  boy  did  not  know  his  letters 
in  English,  though  he  said  that  he  could  read  Jewish 
jargon.  He  Avas  sent  to  the  College  of  Physicians  and 
Surgeons  for  treatment,  and  forbidden  work. 

If  health  certificates  are  granted  to  wage-earning  chil- 
dren merely  pro  forma,  upon  the  representation  of  the 
employer  or  the  child,  the  object  of  the  law  is  nullified. 
The  physician  who  grasps  the  situation,  and  api)reciates 
the  humane  intent  of  the  law,  will  always  find  time 
to  visit  the  factory  and  see  mider  what  conditions  the 


64  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

child  is  working.  Otherwise  his  certificate  may  be  worse 
than  vahieless,  and  work  a  positive  injury  to  a  child 
whom  the  inspectors  are  trying  to  save  from  an  injuri- 
ous occupation.  Thus,  a  healthy  child  may  wish  to  enter 
a  cracker  bakery ;  and  unless  the  physician  visits  it,  and 
sees  the  dwarfish  boys  slowly  roasting  before  the  ovens, 
in  the  midst  of  unguarded  belting  and  shafting,  a  danger 
to  health  which  men  refuse  to  incur,  he  may  be  inclined 
to  grant  the  certificate,  and  thereby  deprive  the  child  of 
the  only  safeguard  to  health  which  the  State  affords 
him.  Similar  danger  exists  in  regard  to  tobacco,  picture- 
frame,  box,  metal-stamping,  and  wood-working  factories. 

The  following  example  of  the  reckless  issuance  of  cer- 
tificates is  of  interest  here,  the  child  being  a  resident  of 
the  nineteenth  ward,  employed  in  this  ward,  and  receiving 
the  certificates  to  be  subsequently  quoted  from  physicians 
living  and  practising  in  this  ward  :  — 

Annie  Cihlar,  a  delicate-looking  little  girl,  was  found 
working  at  144  "West  Taylor  Street,  in  a  badly  ventilated 
tailor-shop,  in  a  building  in  the  rear  of  a  city  lot,  with 
windows  on  alley,  and  a  tenement  house  in  front.  The 
bad  location  and  atmosphere  of  the  shop,  and  the  stoop- 
ing position  of  the  child  over  her  work,  led  the  inspector 
to  demand  a  health  certificate. '  Examination  at  the  in- 
spector's ofiice  revealed  rachitis  and  an  antero-posterior 
curvature  of  the  spine,  one  shoulder  an  inch  higher  than 
the  other,  and  the  child  decidedly  below  the  standard 
weight.  Dr.  Milligan  indorsed  upon  the  age  affidavit : 
"  It  is  my  opinion  this  child  is  physically  incapable  of 
working  in  any  tailor-shop."  The  employer  was  notified 
to  discharge  the  child.  A.  few  days  later  she  was  found 
at  work  in  the  same  place,  and  the  contractor  produced 


WAGE-EARNING   CHILDREN.  66 

the  following  certificate,  written  upon  the  prescription 
blank  of  a  physician  in  good  and  regular  standing: 
'*  This  is  to  certify  that  I  have  examined  Annie  Cihlar, 
and  found  her  in  a  physiological  condition."  A  test  case 
was  made  to  ascertain  the  value  of  the  medical  certificate 
clause,  and  the  judge  decided  that  this  certificate  was 
void,  and  imposed  a  fine  upon  the  employer  for  failing 
to  obtain  a  certificate  in  accordance  with  the  wording  of 
the  law.  The  child  then  went  to  another  physician,  and 
obtained  the  following  certificate  :  "  To  whom  it  may 
concern :  This  is  to  certify  that  I  have  this  day  examined 
Annie  Cihlar,  and  find  her,  in  my  opinion,  healthy.  She 
is  well-developed  for  her  age ;  muscular  system  in  good 
condition ;  muscles  are  hard  and  solid  ;  lungs  and  heart 
are  normal.  The  muscles  of  right  side  of  trunk  are 
better  developed  than  upon  the  left  side,  which  has  a 
tendency  to  draw  spine  to  that  side.  I  cannot  find  no 
desease  [s/c]  of  the  spine."  The  sweater,  taught  by  ex- 
perience, declined  to  re-engage  this  child  until  this  cer- 
tificate was  approved  by  the  inspector,  and  the  inspector 
of  course  refused  to  approve  it. 

DANGER    OF    MUTILATION    AND    DEATH. 

Not  always,  however,  does  the  illiteracy  of  a  physician 
afford  an  opportunity  to  have  a  certificate  issued  by  him 
declared  worthless.  If  the  certificate  formally  meets 
the  requirement  of  the  law,  the  child  must  be  left  at 
work,  no  matter  what  the  effect  upon  its  health,  present 
and  future.  The  same  is  true  w^here  inspectors  have 
tried  to  save  children  from  danger  to  life  and  limb,  by 
requiring  health  certificates  for  them  when  found  work- 
ing amidst  dangerous  mac-hiniMy.     There  is  in  the  Illinois 


GQ  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

law  no  provision  for  the  safeguarding  of  machinery ;  and 
if  a  physician  issues  a  certificate  to  a  child  merely  because 
it  is  for  the  moment  in  good  health,  with  no  knowledge 
of  the  dangerous  occupation  of  the  child,  the  inspector, 
under  the  present  law,  is  powerless.  An  example  is 
afforded  by  a  stamping-factory  of  this  ward.  The  in- 
spector called  the  attention  of  the  head  of  the  firm  to 
the  danger  to  which  employees  were  subjected,  because 
of  unguarded  shafting  and  machinery,  and  required  a 
health  certificate  for  every  minor  employed  there.  A 
week  later  a  deputy  inspector  went  to  this  factory,  and 
found  twenty-five  health  certificates,  in  proper  form,  on 
file.  One  of  these  certificates  was  already  superfluous. 
The  boy  for  whom  it  had  been  obtained  had  been  killed 
in  the  factory  the  day  before.  Within  two  years  two 
boys  have  been  killed  outright,  and  several  mutilated 
in  this  factory.  The  last  boy  killed  had  lost  three  fin- 
gers at  his  machine  only  a  few  months  before  his  death. 
One  machine  used  in  the  stamping-works  consists  of  an 
endless  chain  revolving  over  a  trough  filled  with  melted 
solder.  In  this  trough  cans  are  kept  moving  in  un- 
broken procession,  revolving  as  they  go.  At  each  end 
of  the  trough  stands  a  boy  with  a  little  iron  poker, 
made  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  cans  in  their  places 
and  pulling  them  out  at  the  end.  But  the  poker  is  not 
always  quick  enough,  and  the  boy's  hand  is  apt  to  get 
into  contact  with  the  melting  fluid.  In  preparation  for 
this  danger  the  lads  wrap  their  hands  before  beginning 
work  ;  but  this  precaution  is  only  good  for  minor  burns, 
and  the  real  danger  to  the  child  is  that  he  may  lose 
a  hand  outright.  This  machine  has  been  superseded  in 
the  stamping-works  of  more  progressive  manufacturers 


]\'AGE-EARXiya   CIIILBIiEN.  67 

by  a  self-actor,  which  may  be  made  free  from  danger  to 
an  employee;  but  this  is  expensive,  and  cliildren  of  the 
class  emplo3'ed  at  the  stamping-works  are  so  thoroughly 
defenceless  by  reason  of  jjoverty  and  ignorance  of  the 
laws  and  language  of  the  country,  that  the  company  finds 
it  cheaper  to  use  the  old-fashioned  machine,  and  take  the 
risk  of  damage  suits,  than  to  pay  for  the  more  modern 
solderer.  The  metal-stamping  trade,  like  the  candy, 
paper-box,  and  garment  trades,  is  without  organization, 
and  the  children  employed  in  it  suffer  accordingly.  This 
company  employs  a  large  bod}-  of  recently  immigrated 
Russian  and  Bohemian  men,  boys,  and  girls,  many  of 
whom  are  wholly  illiterate  ;  and  even  if  they  can  read 
their  own  language,  this  is  of  little  avail  for  reading  the 
terms  of  the  contract,  printed  in  English,  under  -which 
they  are  emplo3'ed,  or  the  card  of  directions  which  each 
one  is  required  to  carry  in  his  or  her  pocket,  in  order 
that  the  company  may  prove,  in  case  of  injury  to  an 
employee,  that  notice  of  the  danger  had  been  given,  and 
that  the  injury  was  therefore  no  fault  of  the  company, 
but  solely  due  to  the  recklessness  of  the  boy  or  girl. 

Of  the  rules  printed  on  these  cards,  one  reads  as 
follows :  — 

11.  All  employees  are  strictly  forbidden  placing  their  hands 
under  the  dies;  and  all  employees,  oilier  than  those  whose  duty 
it  is  to  repair  or  clean  machines,  are  strictly  forbidden  to  place 
their  hands  or  any  part  of  their  body  in  contact  witli  or  witliin 
reach  of  those  jiortions  of  the  machinery  intended  to  be  in  motion 
when  the  machinery  is  in  operation,  or  in  contact  with,  or  in 
reach  of  the  shafting;  and  this  api)lies  to  machinery  in  operation 
and  not  in  operation.     It  is  dangerous  to  disobey  this  rule. 

For  middle-aged  men,  self-possessed  and  cautious,  able 
to  read  these  rules  and  ponder  them,  it  would  still  be  a 


68  nULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

grewsome  thought  that  the  penalty  of  violation  may  be 
instant  death ;  but  where  the  employees  are  growing 
lads,  many  of  them  unable  to  read  at  all,  and  all  at 
the  age  when  risk  is  enticing,  and  the  most  urgent 
warning  is  often  a  stimulus  to  wayward  acts,  Avhat 
excuse  can  be  offered  for  supplying  machinery  lack- 
ing in  any  most  trifling  essential  of  safeguard  ?  Yet 
these  rules  themselves  announce  that  the  surroundings 
of  these  boys  are  so  fraught  with  danger,  that  a  whole 
code  of  fourteen  rules  and  regulations  is  needful  to  pro- 
tect the  pockets  of  the  company  in  the  probable  event 
of  injury  to  the  children.  There  are  other  wealthy  cor- 
porations and  firms  in  Chicago  to-day  holding  contracts 
with  the  parents  or  guardians  of  em])loyed  children, 
and  with  casualty  insurance  companies,  releasing  the 
employers  from  liability  in  case  of  accident  to  the 
child.  Does  any  one  suppose  that  an  employer  would 
hold  such  contracts  unless  accidents  to  children  in  his 
employ  were  numerous,  and  might  be  made  costly  ? 

Ingenious  safeguards  are  a  part  of  the  construction 
of  machinery  in  modern  plants  ;  but  many  factories  are 
operated  without  such  improvements,  and  expose  em- 
ployees, old  and  young,  to  constant  danger  of  death  or 
mutilation.  Even  where  the  latest  patents  in  safeguard- 
ing are  found,  accidents  are  possible  if  operators  are 
careless.  In  a  factory  where  accidents  are  of  almost 
daily  occurrence  among  the  children  employed,  we  are 
told,  ''  They  never  get  hurt  till  they  get  careless."  This 
is  no  doubt  true  ;  but  if  it  be  offered  as  an  excuse 
for  the  mutilation  of  children,  it  is  an  aggravation  of, 
rather  than  an  excuse  for,  the  crime  against  the  child. 
To  be  care-free  is  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  childhood. 


WAGE-EARNI.Xa    CIIILDREN.  09 


MIGRATION'    OF    TIIK    CHII-DUKX. 

Nothing  in  our  woi'k  lias  been  more  of  a  revelation 
than  the  migratory  method  i)ursued  by  the  children, 
which  forever  disposes  of  the  only  argument  in  favor  of 
child-labor  that  before  seemed  valid ;  namel}',  that  the 
work  afforded  a  sort  of  industrial  education  for  the  boy 
or  girl  who  must  depend  ujtoii  manual  labor  for  liveli- 
hood in  adult  years.  They  talk  with  insufficient  knowl- 
edge who  say  it  is  an  advantage  to  boys  and  girls  to 
work  because  they  have  "a  steady  occupation,"  a  "chance 
to  learn  a  trade."  The  places  where  boys  and  girls  are 
learning  trades  are  the  exception.  The  places  where 
fortunes  are  being  built  Tip  l)y  employing  them  in  droves 
are  the  ones  where  most  of  them  are  found  working.  In 
these  the  condition  of  work  and  wages  is  so  unsatisfac- 
tory that  employment  in  them  is  a  mere  makeshift. 
One  place  will  be  no  better  than  another,  and  one  change 
will  follow  another.  It  is  not  a  trade  that  is  learned  in 
the  great  workshops  where  child-labor  is  the  foundation 
of  a  company's  riches.  "What  the  child  does  learn  is  in- 
stability, unthrift,  trifling  with  opportunity. 

On  Aug.  23,  1893,  an  inspection  of  a  candy  factor}' 
showed  80  children  employed  under  sixteen  years. 
Their  affidavits  were  examined,  G3  of  them  were  found 
correct,  and  were  so  stamped ;  and  17  children  unpro- 
vided with  affidavits  were  sent  home.  On  September  8 
another  inspector  found  71  children  at  work  in  this  fac- 
tory, with  65  affidavits  awaiting  inspection,  only  one  of 
Avhich  had  the  stamp  of  the  previous  inspection.  The 
70  children  were  a  new  lot,  and  all  but  one  of  those 
at  work  there  two  weeks  before  liad  flitted  off  to  other 


70  IIULL-HOU^E  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

work.  In  the  same  factory  on  September  11,  three  days 
later,  —  and  one  of  these  a  Sunday,  —  a  third  inspector 
found  119  children  at  work,  and,  of  course,  another  lot 
of  affidavits,  requiring  the  employer  to  make  new  wall 
records  and  a  new  office  register.  This  candy  manufac- 
turer now  aims  to  employ  only  girls  over  sixteen  j^ears. 
He  will  find  plenty  of  them  anxious  to  obtain  work  ; 
but  he  cannot  get  them  at  four  and  one-half  cents  an 
hour,  which  is  the  average  wage  of  the  little  children 
employed  in  this  trade. 

It  is  a  matter  of  the  rarest  occurrence  to  find  a  set  of 
children  who  have  been  Avorking  together  two  months 
in  any  factory.  They  are  here  to-day  and  gone  to- 
morrow ;  and,  while  their  very  instability  saves  them 
from  the  specific  poison  of  each  trade,  it  promises  an 
army  of  incapables,  to  be  supported  as  tramps  and  pau-^ 
pers.  The  child  Avho  handles  arsenical  paper  in  a  box- 
factory  long  enough,  becomes  a  hopeless  invalid.  The 
boy  who  gilds  cheap  frames  with  mercurial  gilding, 
loses  the  use  of  his  arm,  and  acquires  incurable  throat 
troubles.  The  tobacco  girls  suffer  nicotine  poisoning ; 
the  foot-power  sewing-machine  girl  is  a  lifelong  victim 
of  pelvic  disorders.  But  the  boy  or  girl  who  drifts 
through  all  these  occupations,  learning  no  one  trade, 
earning  no  steady  wage,  forming  no  lasting  associations, 
must  end  as  a  shiftless  bungler,  Jack-of -all-trades,  master^ 
of  none,  ruined  in  mind  and  character,  as  the  more  abid- 
ing worker  is  enfeebled  or  crippled  in  bodj'. 

There  are  factories  in  which  dissolute  adults  are  em- 
ployed among  children,  and  sow  their  moral  pestilence 
unchecked  ;  Avhere  petty  bosses  tempt  young  girls  to 
evil  courses,  and  the  example  of  trifling  favors  shown 


WAGE-EAILMXG    CHILDREN.  71 

one  weak  girl  who  yields  demoralizes  many  more. 
There  are  factories  Avhere  the  very  sanitary  arrange- 
ments expose  children  to  temjitation  and  to  disease,  and 
the  rules  violate  their  natural  modesty.  There  are 
factories  in  which  cliildren  are  worked  into  the  late 
evening  hours,  and  then  turned  out  unprotected,  to  seek 
their  homes  by  streets  where  the  immoral  side  of  life  is 
at  such  hours  openly  flaunted,  and  vicious  lures  draw 
the  unwary  feet  of  tired  boys  and  girls  down  to  moral 
death.  There  are  factories  in  which  the  entire  roll  of 
female  help  is  made  up  of  young  girls,  and  these  girls 
are  grouped  at  work  with  men  so  vile  that  the  presence 
of  a  woman  of  mature  years  scarcely  serves  to  check 
their  ribaldry.  There  are  factories  where  one  of  the 
hourly  occupations  of  little  boys  and  "girls  is  to  run  to 
a  beer  saloon  with  the  pails  of  the  older  workmen. 
These  are  mere  outlines  of  what  the  factory  inspector 
sees  and  knows  of  the  environment  of  a  child  in  the 
class  of  factories  owned  by  employers  who  batten  on 
child-labor. 

CAUSES    AND    REMEDIES. 

While  it  is  true,  as  has  been  shown,  that  the  indus- 
tries of  Illinois  are  essentially  men's  trades,  yet  there 
are  here,  as  in  all  American  industrial  communities, 
occupations  employing  almost  no  men,  trades  known  as 
"  baby-trades."  These  are  the  candy,  the  tobacco  and 
snuff,  and  the  paper-box  trades.  Although  in  the  wood 
and  metal  trades,  thanks  to  the  powerful  organizations 
of  men,  the  number  of  children  relatively  to  men  is 
small,  yet  certain  branches,  and  certain  factories  Avithin 
these  branches,  employ  children  in  peculiarly  injurious 
ways. 


72  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

It  has  been  found  in  the  case  of  the  cutlery  and 
stamping  works  that  some  of  the  children  working  for 
wages  are  orphans  and  half -orphans,  but  a  large  majority 
are  the  children  of  men  employed  in  industries  with- 
out strong  labor  organizations,  such  as  laborers,  lum- 
ber-shovers,  or  employees  in  the  garment  trades.  In 
an  incredibly  large  proportion  of  cases,  the  fathers  of 
young  wage-earning  children  not  only  do  not  support 
the  family,  but  are  themselves  supported  by  it,  being 
superannuated  early  in  the  forties  by  the  exhaustion 
characteristic  of  the  garment  trades,  or  the  rheumatism 
of  the  ditcher  and  sewer-digger,  and  various  other  sorts 
of  out-door  workers ;  or  by  that  loss  of  a  limb  which  is 
regarded  as  a  regular  risk  in  the  building-trades  and 
among  railroad  hands.  Long  years  of  consumption 
make  hundreds  of  fathers  burdens  on  their  younger 
children.  Some  of  the  children,  however,  principally 
Italians,  Bohemians,  and  Germans,  are  sent  to  work  by 
their  parents  out  of  sheer  excess  of  thrift,  perhaps  in 
order  to  pay  off  a  mortgage  upon  some  tenement  house. 
In  hundreds  of  cases  during  1893-1894  the  children  left 
school  and  went  to  work  because  the  father,  previously 
the  sole  support  of  the  family,  was  now  among  the  un- 
employed. This  is  a  lasting  injury  wrought  by  every 
industrial  crisis  ;  for  the  children  so  withdrawn  from 
school  are  ashamed  to  return,  after  prolonged  absence, 
to  a  lower  class ;  and,  having  tasted  the  excitement  of 
factory-life  and  partial  self-support,  are  unfitted  for  any- 
thing else.  The  growth  of  child-labor  during  these 
months  has  been  very  marked,  the  demand  for  children 
increasing  in  the  universal  effort  to  reduce  expenses  by 
cutting  wages ;    so    that    it   was    a    matter   of   common 


WAGE-EAR XIXG    CHILDREN.  73 

remark  that  in  any  given  trade  in  wliieh  children  were 
employed,  that  factory  was  busiest  which  employed 
fewest  adults.  In  general,  however,  it  remains  true, 
that  in  the  industries  of  Illinois  there  is  no  need  in 
the  nature  of  the  work  to  be  performed  for  any  chai-ac- 
teristic  quality  of  children.  The  presence  of  the  chil- 
dren in  the  industries  is  more  by  reason  of  poverty  of 
their  families  than  of  any  technical  requirements  of  the 
industries  themselves.  Everything  done  by  children 
under  sixteen  years  of  age  could  be  quite  as  swiftly 
done  by  young  people  between  sixteen  and  eighteen 
years.  As  has  already  been  indicated,  the  question  of 
child-labor  in  Illinois  is  j^riniarily  a  question  of  the 
wages  of  the  fathers  of  families  in  the  unorganized 
trades  ;  and,  secondarily,  it  is  a  consequence  of  the  pre- 
mature disablement  of  the  men  upon  whom  the  support 
of  the  children  would  normally  fall. 

Where  a  trade  is  well  organized,  few  children  are  to 
be  found  at  work  in  it.  But  where  a  trade  is  in  the 
hands  of  women,  it  is  never  strongly  organized;  and  the 
women  neither  keep  the  children  out  of  the  shops  nor 
demand  and  obtain  wholesome  conditions  of  work.  This 
is  conspicuously  true  in  the  garment  trades,  in  which 
women  and  children  outnumber  the  men  by  two  to  one ; 
while  hours  are  longer,  sanitary  conditions  are  inferior, 
aird  the  amount  of  work  recpiircd  disproportionate  to  the 
strength  of  the  workers,  to  a  greater  degree  than  is  true 
in  any  other  occupation.  If  no  child  under  sixteen  were 
employed  after  to-morrow,  there  would  be  a  marked  dif- 
ference in  certain  limited  trades  in  which  the  labor  of 
fourteen-year-old  children  abounds.  But  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  there  would  be  a  perceptible  rise  in  wages, 


74  IJULL-UOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

because  of  the  total  lack  of  organization  among  the 
girls  between  sixteen  and  twenty  with  whom  the  chil- 
dren have  hitherto  competed,  and  who  would  merely  be 
somewhat  increased  in  number  in  consequence  of  the 
discharge  of  the  children.  It  is  for  the  sake  of  the  chil- 
dren themselves  that  they  should  be  removed  from  the 
labor  market  and  kept  in  school,  far  more  than  for  the 
sake  of  the  effect  that  they  have  upon  the  condition  of 
the  adults  with  whom  they  compete. 

If,  however,  we  take  this  ground,  that  the  prohibition 
of  child-labor  is  a  humanitarian  measure,  to  be  adopted 
in  the  interest  of  the  children  themselves,  we  must  then 
be  consistent,  and  make  provision  for  them,  so  that  they 
shall  not  suffer  hardship  worse  tlian  that  from  which 
we  aim  to  shield  them.  We  have  seen  that  the  trades 
in  which  children  abound  are  the  most  injurious  and 
least  suitable  for  them.  The  wages  paid  children  range 
from  40  cents  a  week  to  $4.00  a  week,  taking  the  whole 
6,576  children  together. 

In  some  cases,  undoubtedly,  in  which  a  young  child 
is  withdrawn  from  work  by  the  law,  an  older  brother  or 
sister  steps  into  the  place  thus  left  vacant.  But  this 
compensation  does  not  always  take  place  in  the  same 
famih",  and  the  deficit  would  have  to  be  made  good  in 
many  cases.  Why  should  this  not  be  accomplished  by 
means  of  scholarships  in  the  upper-grade  grammar 
schools  and  manual-training  schools,  just  as  the  scholar- 
ships are  provided  to-day  in  universities  and  theologi- 
cal seminaries  ?  "Would  not  such  provision  be  vastly 
cheaper  in  the  end  than  the  care  of  the  consumptive 
young  grinders  ?  or  than  the  provision  Avhich  will  be 
inevitably  required  for  the  support  of  the  cripples  turned 


CHART  I. 


S         8EE     8      SSS8 


MEASUREMENTS  OF  154  DEFECTIVE.  GHIGftGO  FftGTORy-GHILDREN-I4-I6  YEftRS  OLD. 


Tlie  above  cliarts  were  made  by  Bayanl  Holmes,  li.  S.,  M.D.,  from  moasiireinc 
taken  in  ISiC.-i,  in  tlie  ollice  of  Mis.  Kelley,  Slate  Factory  Insin-ctor,  of  Illinois. 

CHART   I. 

The  lirst  fifteen  .S(|uares  in  each  row,  roudiiij;  from  left  to  ri>;lit,  coTitain  tlio  measn 
nicnts  of  ten  cliililren  each,  tlie  si.xteeiith  st|uaie  rontain.s  four.  The  meusiiremeiit.- 
the  individual  child  are  found  directly  over  eaeli  other. 

CHART  II. 

Porter's  averages  were  made  on  :uj,000  school  children  of  St.  Louis.  The  ligh 
lines  represent  these  averages,  and  the  darker  those  of  the  factory  children.  P 
were  made  in  the  same  year. 


WAGE-EARNING   CHILDREN.  75 

out  by  the  stamping-works  ?  or  than  the  maintenance 
of  the  families  of  those  who  will  be  superannuated  at 
thirty-five,  because  they  are  now  allowed  to  do  in  the 
clothing-shops  the  work  of  men,  in  the  years  when  they 
ought  to  be  laying  up  a  store  of  energy  to  last  a  normal 
lifetime  ? 

The  key  to  the  child-labor  question  is  the  enforce- 
ment of  school  attendance  to  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  the 
granting  of  such  ample  help  to  the  poorest  of  the  work- 
ing children  as  shall  make  our  public  schools  not  class 
institutions,  but  in  deed  and  in  truth  the  schools  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people.  Only  when  every 
child  is  known  to  be  in  school  can  there  be  any  security 
against  the  tenement-house  labor  of  children  in  our  great 
cities. 

The  legislation  needed  is  of  the  simplest  but  most 
comprehensive  description.  AVe  need  to  have  :  (1)  The 
minimum  age  for  work  fixed  at  sixteen ;  (2)  School 
attendance  made  compulsory  to  the  same  age ;  (3)  Fac- 
tory inspectors  and  truant  officers,  both  men  and  women, 
equipped  with  adequate  salaries  and  travelling  expenses, 
charged  with  the  duty  of  removing  children  from  mill 
and  workshop,  mine  and  store,  and  placing  them  at 
school ;  (4)  Ample  provision  for  school  accommoda- 
tions ;  money  supplied  by  the  State  through  the  school 
authorities  for  the  support  of  such  orphans,  half  orphans, 
and  children  of  the  unemployed  as  are  now  kept  out  of 
school  by  destitution. 

Where  they  are,  the  wage-earning  children  are  an 
unmitigated  injury  to  themselves,  to  the  community 
upon  which  they  will  later  be  burdens,  and  to  the  trade 
which  they  demoralize.     They  learn  nothing  valuable  \ 


76  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

they  shorten  the  average  of  the  trade  life,  and  they 
lower  the  standard  of  living  of  the  adults  with  whom 
they  compete. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF    CHILD-LABOR  IN    THE    UNITED    STATES. 

Third  Special  Report  of  United  States  Commissioner  of  Labor, 
1893,  pp.  254-258.  References  cover  official  data  to  Nov.  30, 
1892. 

Report  Cliief  of  Massachusetts  District  Police,  1893. 

New  York  Factory  Inspector's  Report,  1893. 

Illinois  Factory  Inspector's  Report,  1893. 

Report  Convention  International  Factory  Inspectors'  Associa- 
tion, 1893. 

Symposium  on  Child  Labor,  Arena,  June,  1894:  Assistant 
Inspector  Stevens  of  Illinois ;  Miss  Alice  L.  Woodbridge,  Secre- 
tary New  York  Working  Women's  Society;  and  Prof.  Thomas  E. 
Will. 

Factory  Children  —  White  Child  Slavery,  Helen  Campbell 
and  others.  Arena,  i.  589. 

Prisoners  of  Poverty,  Helen  Campbell,  Boston,  1887. 

Labor  of  Children,  W.  F.  Willoughby  and  Clare  de  Graffen- 
reid,  American  Economic  Association,  v.  5. 

Our  Toiling  Children,  F.  K.  Wischnewetzky,  pamphlet; 
Women's  Christian  Temperance  Publishing  Association,  1889. 

Report  of  Connecticut  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  1889. 


IV. 


RECEIPTS  AND  EXPENDITURES  OF  CLOAK- 
MAKERS  IN  CHICAGO,  COMPARED  WITH 
THOSE   OF  THAT  TRADE  IN  NEW  YORK. 


RECEIPTS  AND  EXPENDITURES  OF  CLOAKMAKERS  IN 

CHICAGO,   COMPARED   WITH  THOSE   OF  THAT 

TRADE   IN  NEW  YORK.' 

BY    ISAHEL    EATOX. 
Dutton  Fellotv,  College  Settlements  Association. 

As  a  basis  of  comparison  in  studying  the  conditions 
of  the  cloakmaking  trade  in  the  two  cities,  the  New 
York  figures  are  given  first.  The  information  in  both 
cases  has  been  obtained  at  first-hand  from  the  unions 
and  through  a  tour  of  the  sweat-shops,  as  well  as  by  the 
assistance  of  certain  leading  workingmen  of  unquestion- 
able trustworthiness  within  these  trades. 

NEW    YD  UK. 

The  computations  in  Xew  York  were  made  on  one 
hundred  and  fifty  schedules,  indicating  the  following 
averages  of  income  and  expense  of  living :  — 

Regular  weekly  wage  previous  to  1893 Sll.G.'i 

Fallen  in  1S93-1894  to 4.92 

Regular  yearly  income  of  family  (of  4.4  persons)    .  323.07 

Fallen  in  1803-1894  to 127.92 

Regular  weekly  income  (distinguished  from  weekly 

M'age)2 6.21 

Fallen  in  1893-1894  to 2.46 

The  one  hundred  and  fifty  schedules  embraced  infor- 

1  Taken  from  material  collected  during  three  months'  residence 
at  Hull-House. 

2  Weekly  icar/p  sliould  he  distinguished  from  vjeekly  income,  the  first 
being  the  average  auiounl  earned  in  a  week  of  the  working-seasoti, 

79 


80  BULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

mation  as  to  the  number  of  cloakmakers  who  increase 
their  income  by  taking  lodgers,  or  by  other  methods. 

The  number  thus  having  increased  incomes  amounted 
to  26%  of  the  whole,  and  the  regular  yearly  income 
thus  increased  was,  previous  to  1893,  $455.19 ;  fallen 
in  1893-1894,  to  $260.04. 

Weekly  income  of  this  26%,  |8.75 ;  fallen  in  1893- 
1894  to  $5.00.  Average  number  in  family,  4.4  per- 
sons. 

The  following  tabular  statement  relates  to  average 
incomes :  — 

Average  yearly  individual  income $73.43 

Average  weekly  individual  income 1.41 

Average  yearly  individual  income  of  the  26%  hav- 
ing increased  incomes,  previous  to  1893      .     .     .     103.45 
Average  weekly  individual  income  of  the  26%  hav- 
ing increased  incomes,  previous  to  1893      .     .     .         1.98 
Average  yearly  income  of  individual  for  the  year 

1893-1894 29.12 

Average  weekly  income  of  individual  for  the  year 

1893-1894 56 

Months  in  the  working  year,  6.4. 
Daily  hours  of  work  (reported),  12.3.^ 

while  the  second  is  z\  of  the  yearly  income.  As  the  working-year  sel- 
dom lasts  more  than  eight  months,  the  M^eekly  income  would  range 
from  two-thirds  (i'«)  of  the  weekly  wage  downward.  This  eight 
months'  working-year  accounts  also  for  the  fact  that  the  yearly  in- 
come (including  wages  and  other  sources  of  income)  appears  to  be  less 
than  a  reckoning  based  on  weekly  wages  alone  would  show.  The  ap- 
parent discrepancy  between  the  amounts  reported  as  weekly  wages 
and  those  reported  as  yearly  incomes  clears  itself  up  at  once,  in  view 
of  the  eight  months'  working-year. 

1  The  Secretary  of  the  Union  in  New  York  states  that  the  average 
of  daily  hours  in  the  season  is  more  than  sixteen. 


RECEIPTS   AND  EXPENDITURES.  81 

The  following  shows  the  cost  of  living:  — 

Average  yearly  cost  of  food   for  a  family  of  4.4 

persons  (*."). (JO  a  week) $291.20 

Average  yearly  cost  of  clothing  for  a  family  of  4.4 

persons 56.24 

Average  yearly  rent  ($10.31  a  month)       ....       123.72 

Average  number  of  rooms,  2.7. 

Percentage  of  total  income  spent  in  rent,  previous  to  1893, 
38%. 

Percentage  of  total  income  spent  in  rent  during  1893-1894, 
when  practically  no  cloaks  were  made,  96%.^ 

Of  150  persons  scheduled,  67%  reported  indebtedness. 

CHICAGO. 

In  Chicago,  Mr.  Abram  Bisno,  for  ten  years  a  cloak- 
maker,  at  present  a  State  deputy  factory  inspector,  has 
made  a  careful  study  of  conditions  in  his  trade,  and  for 
that  purpose  made  averages  on  the  wage  record-books 
of  250  cloakmakers  in  his  union.  These  wage  record- 
books  give  amounts  actually  paid  through  an  entire  year 
to  each  of  250  cloakmakers.  The  yearly  incomes  so 
obtained  ranged  between  $408,  the  lowest,  to  $450,  the 
highest  amount  earned  in  a  year  by  machine-workers  in 
the  trade.  The  average  was  very  near  $430.  The 
amount  earned  by  hand-workers  is  less.  Their  yearly 
incomes  range  between  $300  and  $350,  the  average 
being  very  near  $325.  The  wages  paid  to  girls  em- 
ployed in  the  trade  are  $G.50  or  $7.00  weekly.  Obtain- 
ing from  this  estimate  a  mean  wage,  and  computing  from 

1  In  many  rases  the  coniimt.ations  show  S108  yearly  rent,  and 
between  S7.5  and  SlOO  yearly  earninj^s,  these  being,  of  course,  cases  of 
men  who  have  been  out  of  work  ten  months  or  more. 


82 


HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 


it   the   yearly    income,   gives    $236.25    as    the    average 
yearly  income  of  girls  in  the  cloak  trade. 

The  following  table  gives  weekly  wage,  yearly  income, 
and  weekly  income,  based  on  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
wage  record-books  already  referred  to  :  — 


Cloakmakf.es  in  Chicago. 

Yearly 
Income. 

Weekly 
Wage. 

Weekly 
Income. 

Machine  Work 

$430.00 
325.00 
236.25 

330.42 

$12.28 
9.29 
6.75 

9.44 

$8.27 
6.25 
4.54 

6..35 

Hand-workers  on  Cloaks 

Girls  employed  as  finishers    .... 

Average  rec'd  by  those  engaged  in 

the  trade 

This  may  properly  be  followed  by  a  table  of  compu- 
tations comparing  the  yearly  income  of  cloakmakers 
in  Chicago  (family  men  and  single  men  being  given  to- 
gether, as  they  get  practically  the  same  wages  in  this 
city)  with  the  yearly  expenditure  of  family  men  and  of 
single  men  separately  :  — 

Yearly  income  of  cloakmakers  in  Chicago  (family 

men  and  single  men) $330.42 

Yearly  expenditure  of  cloakmakers  (family  men)      .     440.04 
Yearly  expenditure  of  cloakmakers  (single  men)  .     .     25.5.44 

This  table  represents  current  rates  paid  before  the 
panic  of  1893 ;  but  during  the  extreme  depression  of 
trade  following  this  panic,  the  pay  of  garment  workers 
in  nearly  every  branch  of  the  trade,  and  in  the  cloak- 
making  trade  among  others,  was  cut  down  about  one- 
half.  This  statement  is  supported  by  the  following 
definite  enumeration  of  prices  paid  to  workmen  before 
and  after  the  panic.  A  plush  cloak  for  which  the  tailor 
received  $1.25  before  the  crisis,  in  August,  1894,  brought 


RECEIPTS  AND   EXPEXDITriiES. 


83 


60  or  75  cents.  A  street  jacket  which  formerly  brought 
the  tailor  45  cents,  brought  in  August,  1894,  25  cents. 
One  that  brouglit  G5  cents,  brought  in  August,  1S94,  .35 
cents.  A  coat  which  brought  ^1.1-,  brought  in  August, 
1894,  72^  cents ;  and  an  overcoat  which  formerly  paid 
the  tailor  ^2.75,  brought  in  August,  1894,  $1.40  to 
$1.50. 

In  contrast  with  these  half-rates  of  1893-1894,  wages 
in  October,  1894,  when  all  the  shops  resumed  work, 
under  unusual  pressure,  show  a  rise  which  is  a  slight 
advance  even  on  the  usual  rate.  The  following  table  of 
averages,  based  on  one  hundred  records  taken  in  October, 
1894,  from  Hull-House,  indicates  cloakmakers'  wages, 
rents,  and  number  in  debt.  The  wages  will  be  seen  to 
run  slightly  in  advance  even  of  the  regular  wages,  pre- 
vious to  1893-1894  :  — 


■^ 

,  7, 

ia 

sa 

ai 

n 

S5»    . 

6j< 

s85 

=  2:  OS 

2p 

0 

0 

h 

«2 

0 

""« 

■f. 

=4  =  2 

4.77 

1.19 

S0.59 

S3.'».(x) 

.?6.4.-) 

11 

4.38 

3.41 

.?8.47 

-fllr 

Mr.  liisno's  estimate  that  the  length  of  the  working 
year  in  the  cloakmaking  trade  is  "  usually  about  eight 
months  in  Chicago,  but  has  only  been  four  months  or 
less  during  1893-1894,"  agrees  with  this  table;  and  the 
average  wage  as  here  reckoned  will  also  be  seen  to  agree 
with  the  average  wage  which  he  reports.  The  yearly  in- 
comes also  show  $330.42  in  the  case  of  the  two  hundred 
and  fifty  records  taken  by  !Mr.  Bisno,  and  $335.65  in 
the  one  hundred  schedules  taken  from  Hull  House  in 


84  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

October,  1894;  both  Avhich  yearly  amounts  will  be  seen 
to  agree  quite  closely  with  the  ^New  York  yearly  total 
of  $323.07.  The  Chicago  cloakmaker  thus  has  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  New  Yorker,  and  a  further  advantage,  as 
will  be  seen  when  rents  come  under  consideration. 

HOURS    OF    WM)KK. 

In  this  regard  there  appears  to  be  little  difference  in 
the  two  cities.  However,  it  seems  impossible  to  get  the 
truth.  An  occasional  reckless  spirit  will  tell  his  real 
hours,  even  when  contradicted  by  the  sweater ;  but 
usvially  before  answering,  the  workman  looks  at  the 
sweater,  Avho  stands  behind  the  statistician's  shoulder 
(ostensibly  interested  in  examining  his  record),  and 
from  him  seems  to  discover  in  one  glance  hoAV  to  com- 
pute his  daily  hours.  They  are  generally  ten  or  twelve 
when  so  given.  On  coming  out  of  a  sweating-establish- 
ment in  New  York,  Mr.  Glass,  who  is  secretary  of  the 
New  York  Cloakmakers'  Union,  would  frequently  say, 
"  That  was  all  right  but  the  hours.  They  all  lie  about 
the  hours."  Mr.  Goldberg,  an  ex-officer  of  the  United 
Garment  Workers,  says,  "  They  won't  tell  any  one,  even 
their  neighbors,  the  hour  they  begin  work,  and  the  amount 
they  take  home  to  do."  At  another  time  he  said,  "  If  a 
man  (doing  task-work)  works  from  five  o'clock  until 
midnight,  he  can  do  a  '  day's  work '  in  a  day."  He  says, 
"  They  always  begin  at  five  o'clock ;  "  and  Mr.  Osias 
Rosenthal,  secretary  of  the  Knee  Pants  Union,  says, 
"  If  you  look  into  the  streets  any  morning  at  four 
o'clock  you  will  see  them  full  of  people  going  to  work. 
They  raise  themselves  up  at  three  o'clock,  and  are  often 
at  their  machines  at  four.     The  latest  is  sure  to  be  there 


RECEIPTS  AND   EXPEXDITUIiES.  85 

at  five.  The  s^^eneral  time  is  iive  o'clock  all  the  year 
aiouiid  in  good  times,  winter  and  snmmer  ;  and  if  the 
boss  will  give  them  gaslight  some  Avill  go  even  earlier 
than  three  o'clock." 

In  regard  to  extreme  cases  of  long  houis  Mr.  Glass 
says  the  following :  "  I  know  a  man  who  works  in 
this  place  we  are  passing,  and  the  way  they  do  there 
is  this  :  they  work  all  the  week  except  part  of  a  holi- 
day Saturday ;  but  they  come  back  Saturday  afternoon 
and  work  until  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  to  make  uj) 
for  the  holiday."  He  says  this  is  the  usual  thing  in 
this  particular  Bowery  sw^eat-shop.  In  speaking  of  this 
friend  of  his  he  said  further :  ''  Once  he  told  me  that  he 
had  been  working  thirty-eight  hours  steady.  Pie  went 
to  work  Thursday  morning  at  seven,  and  did  not  come 
home  until  Friday  night  at  nine."  In  talking  to  Mr. 
Jensen,  for  many  years  secretary  of  the  Custom  Tailors' 
Union  in  Chicago,  I  learned  in  regard  to  hours  that  "It 
takes  from  forty-five  to  fifty  hours  for  a  custom-tailor  to 
make  a  dress  coat ;  but  when  it  has  to  be  done  at  a  cer- 
tain time  they  will  often  work  forty-eight  hours  at  a 
time." —  "  You  don't  mean  at  one  sitting,  do  you  ?  "  — 
"  Yes."  —  "  Have  you  ever  done  that  yourself  ?  "  — 
"  Yes."  —  "  How  often  ?  "  —  "  I  did  it  the  first  time 
when  I  was  fourteen,  and  I  can't  tell  you  how  often 
since,  —  many  times  since  ;  but  I  have  not  kept  account 
of  the  times,  because  it  is  a  common  thing." 

Mr.  Bisno  says  that  in  Cliicago  during  the  busy  sea- 
son there  is  no  limit ;  that  men  frequently  work  all 
night,  and  that  even  in  the  slack  season  there  are  those 
"who  work  fifteen  and  sixteen  hours  daily,  —  from  5  a.m. 

to  9   I'.M. 


86  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 


INDEBTEDNESS. 

Mr.  Ehrenpreis  of  the  Chicago  Cutters'  Union  agrees 
with  others  iu  saying  that  among  the  Chicago  garment 
workers  "  every  man  is  in  debt."  He  is  "  owing  the 
grocer  and  the  butcher,  and  generally  the  pawn-shop 
too."  The  pawnbroker  in  Chicago  is  far  worse  than  in 
Xew  York,  which  fact  is  accounted  for  by  the  lack  of 
proper  legislation  in  the  former  city.  The  folloAving 
case  came  under  the  notice  of  a  Hull  House  resident, 
during  the  winter  of  181)3-1894  :  a  loan  of  .f25  made 
on  household  furniture  was  drawing  $2  a  week  inter- 
est, and  at  the  time  that  Hull  House  bought  up  this 
mortgage,  ^42  had  already  been  paid  for  a  little  over 
four  months'  use  of  $25 ;  that  is  to  say,  the  broker  was 
taking  interest  on  the  loan  at  the  rate  of  416  per  cent 
yearly.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  condition 
among  garment  workers  in  Chicago  during  the  winter  of 
1893-1894,  agree  that  it  is  impossible  that  so  small  a  per- 
centage as  52  per  cent  should  be  in  debt.  Statistics  on 
indebtedness  must  be  distrusted,  under  whatever  circum- 
stances they  may  be  given. 

Single  men  in  Chicago  have  not  yet  resorted  in  the 
same  degree  as  in  New  York  to  cutting  under  the  family 
man  in  the  matter  of  Avages,  so  that  their  yearly  income 
is  practically  the  same  as  that  of  married  men  ;  but  their 
living  costs  are  much  less,  so  that  it  is  the  exception 
when  the  single  man  is  not  solvent.  For  board  and 
lodging,  which  they  customarily  engage  at  the  same 
place,  they  pay,  on  the  average,  $3.95  a  week,  $17.12  a 
month,  and  with  the  additional  item  of  $50  for  clothing, 


RECEIPTS  AXD   EXPENDITURES.  87 

which  liere,  as  in  New  York,  api)ears  to  be  very  near 
tlie  average,  amounts  to  $255.44  for  living  expenses  in 
the  year.  Setting  this  against  the  singk^  man's  yearly 
income  of  $330.42,  shows  a  balance  to  his  credit  of 
$74.98.  Figuring  on  the  New  York  basis  of  expendi- 
ture for  food  and  cdothing  for  a  family  of  4.4,  we  have 
for  a  Chicago  family  of  4.77,  a  weekly  expenditure  for 
food  and  clothing  amounting  to  $7.15,  which,  augmented 
by  the  monthly  rent  paid  in  Chicago,  $8.47,  shows  a 
total  of  $37.07  monthly  expense  of  a  family.  A  com- 
parison of  this  yearly  expenditure  with  the  average 
yearly  income  of  $330.42,  shows  the  Chicago  cloakmaker 
a  bankrupt  to  the  extent  of  $114.42,  while  the  shortage 
in  the  case  of  the  Xew  Y''ork  cloakmaker  is  $148.09,  — 
an  advantage  of  about  $30  to  the  Chicagoau. 

RENTS. 

The  dwelling-rooms  of  the  cloakmakers  in  Chicago  are 
better  than  those  in  New  Y''ork  in  point  of  size  and 
facilities  for  light  and  ventilation.  Three  hundred  and 
fifty-two  records  of  rent  and  number  of  rooms,  taken  on 
Bunker  and  De  Koven  Streets  in  Chicago,  irrespective  of 
the  trades  of  the  occupants,  show  the  average  number  of 
rooms  to  be  3.46.  The  average  rent  for  this  number 
of  rooms  is  $8.05.  The  Chicagoan  jmys  $8.05  where 
the  New  Yorker  pays  $10,  and  gets  three  and  a  half 
rooms  where  the  New  Yorker  gets  two  and  a  half.  This 
would  make  the  percentage  of  cloakmakers'  total  income 
going  for  rent  in  Chicago,  29  per  cent,  as  o])posed  to  38 
per  cent  in  New  York.  A  comparison  of  these  percent- 
ages with  the  approved  j^ercentage   of  income  paid  for 


88  IIULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

rent  in  France,  and  that  accepted  by  our  own  Labor 
Department,  which  is  14 5  per  cent  of  the  total  income, 
leads  inevitably  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  something 
very  seriously  wrong  in  the  proportion  of  rent  and  wages 
in  the  cloakmaking  trade. 


V. 

THE    CHICAGO    GHETTO. 


THE  CHICAGO  GHETTO. 
BY    CHAKLKS    ZKl'liLIX. 

Two  families  constituted  the  Jewish  population  of 
Chicago  in  1843,  Avhen  the  tirst  refugees  from  the  Ger- 
man persecution  of  1830-1840  found  their  way  to  Illi- 
nois. The  Jewish  Colonization  Society  had  purchased 
a  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land  at  Shaumburg,  Cook 
County;  but  only  a  few  of  the  settlers  took  farms. 
Those  who  located  in  Chicago  organized  the  first  Jewish 
religious  society  in  1845.  The  history  of  the  religious 
organizations  forms  the  history  of  the  colony  for  many 
years.  In  1848  a  society  was  chartered  luider  the  name 
Kehillath  Anshe  Maariv  (Congregation  of  the  Men  of 
Obscurity).  The  tirst  religious  services  were  held  at 
the  corner  of  Lake  and  Wells  Streets.  In  1849  a  syna- 
gogue was  erected  on  Clark  Street,  between  Quiucy  and 
Jackson.  It  was  from  the  ranks  of  the  Kehillath  Anshe 
Maariv  Congregation  that  Reform  Judaism  in  Chicago 
sprung.  A  few  young  men  in  this  congregation  formed 
a  society  called  the  Reform  Association,  to  introduce 
changes  into  the  services  and  doctrines.  Unsuccessful 
in  this,  they  seceded  in  18G1,  and  organized  the  Sinai 
Congregation,  the  tirst  Chicago  organization  of  Reform 
Judaism. 

The  location  of  the  synagogues  marks  the  region 
occupied  by  the  Jewish  colony.  Before  the  tire  they 
were  situated  in  what  is  now  the  chief  business  district 
of   the  city.     A  whole  chapter  of    social   development 

yi 


92  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  leading  wholesale 
houses  of  the  prosperous  and  influential  Jews  of  Chicago 
mark  the  former  site  of  the  homes  of  the  refugees  from 
Germany  ;  while  the  earlier  "  houses  of  prayer,"  on  South 
Clark  Street,  have  literally  yielded  to  "  dens  of  thieves." 
The  dispersion,  which  took  place  as  a  result  of  the  fire 
of  1871,  was  already  presaged  by  the  removal  of  many 
of  the  Jewish  families  to  the  West  Side,  as  is  indicated 
by  the  purchase  of  a  church  building  on  Desplaines 
Street,  between  Madison  and  Washington  Streets,  in 
1864,  by  the  newly  organized  Zion  Congregation,  and  by 
their  removal  in  1869  to  an  edifice  of  their  own,  at  the 
corner  of  Jackson  and  Sangamon  Streets.  Previous  to 
1871  all  of  the  synagogues,  with  one  exception,  were 
those  of  German  Jews ;  and  the  exception  was  that  of 
a  Prussian  Polish  Congregation,  B'nai  Sholoni  (Sons 
of  Peace).  Although  there  were  reported  to  be  12,000 
Jews  in  Chicago  in  1868,  the  recent  growth  of  the  pres- 
ent Ghetto  is  seen  Avhen  it  is  remembered  that  it  is 
composed  largely  of  Russians ;  while  at  the  time  of  this 
estimate  of  the  Jewish  population,  there  were  in  Chicago 
but  118  Russians  of  all  faiths.  The  last  item  of  inter- 
est in  the  present  discussion,  which  relates  to  the  colony 
before  the  fire,  is  the  organization  in  1868  of  the  West- 
ern Hebrew  Christiaii  P)rotherhood.  This  is  worthy 
of  passing  note,  this  proselyting  propaganda  of  zealous 
Christians,  because  almost  every  effort  to  reach  the 
"  chosen  people  "  as  a  people,  and  not  as  individuals,  has 
been  by  narrow-minded  theologians,  who  have  been  "  in- 
stant in  season  and  out  of  season,"  even  to  the  extent  of 
using  the  most  pernicious  methods  of  bribery  in  secur- 
ing converts,  thereby  producing  a  social  injur}-  which  it 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  93 

is  within  the  province  of  this  article  to  consider.  The 
official  report  of  the  "  Brotherhood  "  speaks  for  itself. 
In  18G9,  at  the  first  annual  meeting,  expenditures  to 
the  amount  of  $1,457  were  reported ;  conversions, 
four.  At  the  next  annual  meeting,  1870,  the  expendi- 
tures were  reported,  $2,375 ;  conversions,  none.  If  anti- 
Semitism  has  been  escaped  by  the  Jewish  refugee,  he 
has  not  failed  to  suffer  at  the  hands  of  his "'  friends." 

At  the  present  time  there  is  a  greater  and  a  lesser 
Ghetto  on  the  West  Side  of  Chicago.  The  wider  circum- 
ference, including  an  area  of  about  a  square  mile,  and  a 
population  of  perhaps  70,000,  contains  as  nearly  as  can 
be  estimated  20,000  Jews.  This  comprises  parts  of  the 
nineteenth,  seventh,  and  eighth  wards,  and  is  bounded 
by  Folk  Street  on  the  north,  Blue  Island  Avenue  on  the 
west,  Fifteenth  Street  on  the  south,  and  Stewart  Ave- 
nue on  the  east.  The  lesser  Ghetto  is  found  in  the 
seventh  ward,  bounded  by  Twelfth,  Halsted,  and  Fif- 
teenth Streets,  and  Stewart  Avenue,  where  in  a  popula- 
tion of  fifteen  or  sixteen  thousand,  nine-tenths  are  Jews. 
There  is  no  record  of  statistics  accessible,  either  through 
the  federal  or  local  governments.  Estimates  must  be 
made  from  election  registration,  involving  much  un- 
certainty. 

The  extent  of  the  Jewish  population  has  been  greatly 
over-estimated.  The  present  figures  are  derived  by 
counting  the  Jewish  names  on  the  registration  slips, 
and  making  the  most  liberal  calculations  possible.  The 
number  of  residents  entitled  to  and  using  the  franchise 
is  limited  by  the  short  period  of  residence  of  a  large 
part  of  the  population,  the  ignorance  of  the  language 
among  many  of  the  older  residents,  and  the  inesence  of 


94  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

an  anarchistic  contingent,  whicli  discourages  many  from 
voting  who  are  nevertheless  not  opposed  on  principle  to 
the  ballot. 

The  physical  characteristics  of  the  Ghetto  do  not 
differ  materially  from  the  surrounding  districts.  The 
streets  may  be  a  trifle  narrower ;  the  alleys  are  no 
lilthier.  There  is  only  one  saloon  to  ten  in  other  dis- 
tricts, but  the  screens,  side-doors,  and  loafers  are  of 
the  ubiquitous  type ;  the  theatre  bills  a  higher  grade  of 
performance  than  other  cheap  theatres,  but  checks  are 
given  between  the  acts,  whose  users  find  their  way  to 
the  bar  beneath.  The  dry-goods  stores  have,  of  course, 
the  same  Jewish  names  over  them  which  may  be  found 
elsewhere,  and  the  same  "  cheap  and  nasty "  goods 
within.  The  race  differences  are  subtle ;  they  are  not 
too  apparent  to  the  casual  observer.  It  is  the  religious 
distinction  which  every  one  notices ;  the  synagogues, 
the  Talmud  schools,  the  "  Kosher "  signs  on  the  meat- 
markets.  •  Among  the  dwelling-houses  of  the  Ghetto  are 
found  the  three  types  which  curse  the  Chicago  work- 
ingman,  —  the  small,  low,  one  or  two  story  ''  pioneer  " 
wooden  shanty,  erected  probably  before  the  street  Avas 
graded,  and  hence  several  feet  below  the  street  level ; 
the  brick  tenement  of  three  or  four  stories,  with  insuffi- 
cient light,  bad  drainage,  no  bath,  built  to  obtain  the 
highest  possible  rent  for  the  smallest  possible  cubic 
space  ;  and  the  third  type,  the  deadly  rear  tenement, 
with  no  light  in  front,  and  with  the  frightful  odors  of 
the  dirty  alley  in  the  rear,  too  often  the  Avorkshop  of  the 
"  sweater,"  as  well  as  the  home  of  an  excessive  population. 
On  the  narrow  pavement  of  the  narrow  street  in  front  is 
found  the  omnipresent  garbage-box,  Avith  fidl  measure, 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  95 

pressed  down  and  running  over^  In  all  but  the  severe^jC 
weather  the  streets  swarm  with  children  day  and  nig!it. 
On  bright  days  groups  of  adults  join  the  multitude,  v  spe- 
cially on  Saturday  and  Sunday,  or  on  the  Jewish  holi- 
days. In  bad  weather  the  steaming  windows  show  the 
over-crowded  rooms  within.  ^  A  morning  walk  inrjresses 
one  with  the  density  of,  the  population,  but  an  evening 
visit  reveals  a  hive.  As  has  been  said  before,  how- 
ever, this  is  not  unlike  other  poor  quarters.  There  are, 
though,  some  physical  facts  startling  in  their  contrast 
with  other  districts.  An  interesting  comparison  may 
be  made  between  the  vital  statistics  of  the  seventh,  six- 
teenth, and  nineteenth  wards.  Tne  figures  of  the  Board 
of  Health  are  not  min^..e  enough  to  enable  one  to  com- 
pare smaller  areas  than  wards,  but  these  are  sufficiently 
instructive.  The  seventh  ward  contains  the  largest  Jew- 
ish population  in  the  citJ^  The  sixteenth  ward's  popu- 
lation is  chiefly  Polish  and  German,  which  elements  are 
also  in  the  seventh  ward ;  but  in  the  latter  they  are 
also  Jews.  In  the  nineteenth  ward,  which  adjoins  the 
seventh  on  the  north,  and  which  in  a  homogeneous 
population  could  not  be  vitally  different  from  it,  there 
are  some  Jews,  some  Germans,  many  Italians,  many 
Irish,  and  representatives  of  several  other  nationalities. 
The  vital  statistics  ought  not  to  be  very  different  be- 
tween neighboring  wards  with  similar  material  charac- 
teristics, nor  between  wards  composed  of  people  from 
the  same  European  countries  and  of  the  same  social 
stratum :  but  the  following  figures  speak  for  themselves. 
In  each  thousand  of  the  population  there  are :  — 


96 


HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 


OVEE 
21  YEAES. 

Between 
4  AHV  21. 

Undee  4. 

Death  Rate. 

Geneeal. 

Um>ee 
5  Yeaes. 

Wa-d  VII. 
Ward  XVI. 
Ward  XIX. 

600 
550 
600 

300 
310 
310 

100 

140 

90 

14.18 
19.46 
17.13 

7.88 
12.24 
8.91 

Whether  it  is  due  to  his  religious  observances  or  his 
exclusiveiiess,  the  vitality  of  the  Jew  is  incontestable. 

A  closer  study  of  the  institutions  and  habits  of  this 
community  may  give  us  a  standard  of  judgment,  a  de- 
sideratum not  'lOnly  that  we  may  do  justice  to  the  Jew 
in  these  latter  days  of  anti-Semitism,  but  also  because  of 
the  magnitude  of  the  j^rnblem  forced  on  the  city  and 
the  country  in  the  necessity  of  absorbing  these  foreign 
elements.  Both  by  the  persistence  of  their  traits  when 
segregated,  and  the  readiness  with  which  they  assimilate 
when  encouraged,  the  Jews  furnish  the  most  instructive 
element  in  our  population.  We  shall  find  that  although 
the  Jew  would  be  characterized  by  many  Americans 
in  the  Shakespearian  utterance,  "  God  made  him,  let 
him  2yass  for  a  man,"  the  open  sesame  for  the  inhabit- 
ant of  the  Ghetto  is,  "  God  made  him,  let  him  pass 
for  a  man."  Opportunity  is  what  the  foreigner  in  our 
cities  needs. 

So  much  has  been  written  lately  on  the  general  fea- 
tures of  Jewish  life  in  crowded  city  quarters,  that  the 
reader's  familiarity  with  these  facts  may  be  presupposed.^ 

1  Gregorovius,  "  Der  Ghetto  iind  die  Juden  iu  Rom  "  (Waiider- 
jahre,  i.);  Booth,  "  Labor  and  Life  of  the  People  in  London,"  vol.  1. 
(chap,  on  the  Jews  by  Beatrice  Potter  Webb) ;  Century  3Iar/azine,  1892, 
"  The  Jews  in  New  York;  "  Riis,  "  How  the  Other  Half  Lives,"  chaps. 
X.,  xi.;  Forum,  July,  1893,  "The  Russian  Jew;"  Zangwill,  "Chil- 
dren of  the  Ghetto,"  2  vols.     Philipsoii,  "  Old  European  Jewries." 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  97 

"What  are  the  habits  and  institutions  peculiar  to  the 
Chicago  Ghetto  ? 

Industrial.  The  features  of  Jewish  industry  may 
be  classified  under  the  heads  of  stores  and  trades.  The 
.usual  stores  of  the  meaner  sort  abound  for  the  supply 
of  the  daily  necessaries.  The  provisions  of  the  "  ortho- 
dox "  are  bought  at  ^'  Kosher "  (ceremonially  clean) 
shops.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  these  articles  are  only 
ceremonially  clean.  The  more  rigidly  *'  fromm  "  (pious, 
in  the  best  sense)  are  very  suspicious  even  of  these 
stores  of  their  own  religionists.  But  one  must  eat.  It 
is  said  that  at  one  time  the  distress  of  the  '•  orthodox  " 
was  great  over  the  inability  to  secure  meat  which  had 
certainly  been  prepared  according  to  the  ]\Iosaic  code. 
One  of  the  philanthropic  packers  of  Chicago  came  to 
their  rescue  by  hiring  Jews  to  slaughter  a  certain  num- 
ber of  cattle,  cutting  their  throats  as  the  law  demands, 
instead  of  employing  the  method  usual  at  the  stock- 
yards of  striking  them  on  the  head  with  a  mallet.  He 
was  thus  enabled  to  satisfy  the  consciences  of  a  large 
number  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and  incidentally  to  sell 
his  toughest  meat.  "  Kosher  "  restaurants  also  minister 
to  the  wants  of  the  Jewish  community.  These,  when 
public,  are  only  patronized  by  the  more  lax ;  many  even 
of  the  indifferent  or  agnostic  class  preferring  to  eat 
where  dishes  are  prepared  according  to  their  inherited 
tastes.  The  strict  religionists,  when  not  able  to  eat  at 
home,  frequent  only  private  restaurants  which  can  be 
fully  trusted.  These  are  not  to  be  found  opening  on 
the  street,  but  in  an  upper  story,  where  privacy  can  be 
had,  and  the  patronage  is  select. 

The  proprietor  of  the  down-town  clothing-store  does 


98  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AXD   PAPEIIS. 

not  as  a  nile  live  in  the  Ghetto.  He,  as  well  as  the 
owner  of  the  pawn-shop,  lives  over,  behind,  or  near  his 
place  of  business.  This  being  true,  it  is  hard  to  find  a 
pawnbroker  in  the  Ghetto.  The  scarcity  of  pawn-shops 
in  such  a  poor  district  is  one  of  the  astonishing  features. 
The  greatest  enterprise  to  be  placed  under  the  head  of 
stores  is  the  junk-shop.  This  assumes  mammoth  and 
vile  proportions.  An  old  storeroom,  the  cellar  or  the 
rear  of  a  house,  is  made  to  contain  a  huge  collection  of 
promiscuous  pickings  which  seem  useless,  but  when  as- 
sorted prove  to  have  a  value  not  to  be  despised.  The 
pertinacit}'  and  vitality  of  the  Jew  are  seen  in  his  ability 
to  labor  in  such  disagreeable  and  dangerous  surround- 
ings, to  put  his  children  through  such  experiences  with 
the  waste  and  filth  of  a  city,  and  bring  himself  and 
them  out  into  a  life  many  grades  above  the  Italian  rag- 
picker. The  chief  trades  in  which  the  Jew  is  found 
here,  as  elsewhere,  are  peddling,  cigarmaking,  and  tail- 
oring.    The  last  is  a  sweated  trade. 

The  most  pitiable  thing  about  the  sweat-shops  in  this 
district  is  the  oppression  of  Jew  by  Jew.  Eighteous 
recompense  has  disappeared  when  the  trading  instinct 
inherited  from  centuries  of  Christian  persecution  is  di- 
rected to  the  crushing  of  '•  the  weaker  brother.''  instead 
of  turning  iipon  the  persecutor.  A  pedler's  license  is 
the  ransom  of  the  unskilled  Jew.  This  enables  him  to 
spend  the  day  in  the  open  air.  though  his  lodging  may 
be  in  no  way  more  healthful  than  the  sweater's  den  to 
which  his  fellow  is  doomed  day  and  night.  It  makes 
of  him  also  an  independent  capitalist,  whose  hoardings 
soon  lead  to  an  expansion  of  business,  often  to  the  det- 
riment of   the   small   settled  traders.       Peddling  is  an 


THE  CHICAGO    (illKTTO.  09 

individual  benefit,  hut  a  social  ill  which  can  only  be 
excused  when  contrasted  with  the  slavery  of  the  sweat- 
ers' victim. 

In  this  connection  must  be  mentioned  the  efforts  of 
the  Employment  Bureau  connected  with  the  United 
Hebrew  Charities,  by  far  the  most  satisfactory  and 
praiseworthy  department  of  that  organization.  In  the 
ten  years,  1883-1893,  there  were  recorded  5,457  appli- 
cants for  work.  Work  was  provided  for  4,5'.)0 ;  711  <lid 
not  call  to  know  the  residt  of  the  organization's  effort ; 
120  were  not  found  employment ;  857  refused  the  work 
offered.  These  applicants  represented  thirteen  nation- 
alities of  Jews,  of  which  2,733  were  Russians,  1,920 
from  Germany  and  Austria.  In  1803  there  were  67G 
applicants  from  Russia,  as  compared  with  580  in  1802, 
342  in  1891,  and  191  in  1890.  Among  the  applicants  in 
1893,  the  occupations  recorded  for  which  no  positions 
were  available  were,  pedler,  44 ;  merchant,  14G ;  stu- 
dent, 10;  distiller,  4;  miller  and  physician  each  1. 
It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  unemployed  Jews  to  say  that 
while  191  applied  for  positions  as  laborers  or  porters, 
364  accepted  such  positions.  76  clerkships  were  pro- 
vided when  there  had  been  88  applications.  Of  the 
applicants  as  bookbinders,  cabinetmakers,  coppersmiths, 
blacksmiths,  tinsmiths,  locksmiths,  machinists,  painters, 
shoemakers,  tailors,  jewellers,  printers,  watchmakers, 
iron-moulders,  butchers,  and  furriers,  only  20  out  of  224 
failed  to  find  the  employment  they  desired.  This  is 
not  only  creditable  to  the  bureau,  but  shows  versatility 
in  the  Jew. 

In  the  year  1891  a  society  was  organized  to  care  for 
the  large  number  of  Russian  Jews  driven  to  Chicago  by 


100  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

the  renewed  persecutions.  For  eighteen  months  the 
Society  in  Aid  of  Russian  Refugees  succeeded  in  help- 
ing new  arrivals,  ignorant  of  language  and  customs,  and 
without  friends.  The  chief  efforts  of  the  society  were 
directed  to  sending  the  refugees  to  homes  in  smaller 
cities  or  in  the  country.  Nearly  1,000  persons  were  dis- 
tributed in  twenty-four  States  and  Territories,  of  whom 
129  returned  unable  to  find  satisfactory  employment. 
The  officers  of  the  organization  also  found  employment 
for  over  500  persons  during  the  brief  existence  of  the 
society.  The  work  thus  accomplished  diiring  an  emer- 
gency is  a  pertinent  suggestion  of  a  needful  enterprise 
in  Chicago  and  other  large  cities.  The  emigration  so- 
cieties of  England  accomplish  a  work  which  is,  if  pos- 
sible, even  more  needed  in  the  rapidly  growing  American 
cities. 

The  chief  labor  organizations  of  the  Jews  are  the 
Cigarmakers'  Union  and  the  Cloakmakers'  Union. 
While  these  organizations  are  taxed  to  keep  wages 
above  starvation  level,  they  are  composed  of  an  un- 
usvially  intelligent  set  of  men,  when  their  wages  and 
hours  are  considered. 

Social.  The  social  institutions  of  the  Ghetto  are  not 
numerous,  but  for  the  most  part  more  helpful  than  simi- 
lar institutions  in  other  districts.  Perhaps  the  most  in- 
teresting is  the  latest  acquisition,  the  jMaxwell  Street 
Settlement.  At  the  suggestion  of  a  prominent  Jewish 
rabbi,  two  Aoung  coTrege-bred  Jews  have  taken  up  resi- 
dence in  the  heart  of  the  Ghetto.  Another  resident  has 
Ijeen  added  since  the  work  commenced.  A  private  resi- 
dence of  a  dozen  rooms  was  secured,  which  has  served 
their  purpose  during  the  initial  stages  of  the  work  ;   but 


THE  CHICAGO    GHETTO.  101 

its  capacity  is  already  taxed.  Tlie  readiness  witli  wliich 
the  neighborhood  accepted  the  hospitality  of  the  settle- 
ment speaks  volumes  for  the  efficiency  of  the  residents 
and  the  responsiveness  of  the  Jewish  community.  The 
usual  social  efforts  of  a  settlement  are  put  forth;  but, 
as  is  natural  in  a  new  enterprise,  the  best  work  thus  far 
has  been  educational.  Among  the  more  formal  social 
activities  may  be  mentioned  three  boys'  and  three  girls' 
clubs,  with  a  total  membership  of  eighty-five,  who  meet 
■weekly  to  read  juvenile  literature ;  an  older  girls'  club  of 
ten  members,  and  an  occasional  neighborhood  social  gath- 
ering. Owing  to  the  unusual  distress  of  last  winter 
(1893-1894),  some  relief-work  has  been  forced  upon  the 
settlement ;  but  this  has  been  done  by  a  corps  of  visitors 
without  in  any  way  encroaching  on  the  time  of  the  other 
workers.  The  settlement  is  demonstrating  the  faith  of 
a  growing  number  of  believers  in  the  Russian  Jew,  that 
with  the  removal  of  the  despotism  of  his  native  land 
his  ambition  and  tenacity  Avill  make  of  him  a  splendid 
American,  imless  he  falls  a  victim  to  the  despotism  of 
commercialism. 

One  of  the  indirect  benefits  of  the  settlement  has  been 
the  organization  of  the  Self  Educational  Club  by  some 
of  the  more  intelligent,  progressive  Jews  of  the  Ghetto, 
with  a  view  to  i)roviding  social  and  educational  oppor- 
tunities for  themselves.  Club-rooms  have  been  secured 
at  572  South  Halsted  Street,  and  a  genuine  neighbor- 
hood guild  is  being  developed.  A  musicale  every  Satur- 
day evening  brings  the  members  together  weekly  for 
social  intercourse.  The  club  is  supported  by  a  member- 
ship fee  of  fifty  cents,  and  dues  of  ten  cents  a  week. 

Metropolitan  Hall,  on  Jefferson  Street,  is  the  dramatic 


102  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

and  operatic  centre  of  the  Ghetto.  The  contrast  be- 
tween this  theatre  and  any  other  place  of  amusement  in 
a  district  of  equal  poverty  is  another  testimony  to  the 
latent  tastes  of  the  Jew.  It  is  one  of  the  best  places  to 
view  the  characteristics  of  the  community,  if,  indeed,  the 
amusements  of  a  people  do  not  always  reveal  the  inner 
man  relaxed  as  nothing  else  does.  It  is  a  genuine  Volks- 
theater.  One  leaves  America  almost  before  entering  the 
theatre.  Large  signs  in  Hebrew  characters  announce 
the  plays,  which,  are  given  on  Wednesday,  Saturday,  and 
Sunday  evenings.  Twenty -five  cents  admits  one  to  the 
best  seat  in  the  house.  The  floor  is  level ;  the  stage 
quite  a  little  elevated ;  there  are  quasi  boxes  on  each 
side,  and  a  well-filled  gallery  is  seen  in  the  rear.  The  dec- 
orations are  abominable,  but  American  and  not  Jewish. 
The  only  other  American  incident  is  the  cat-call,  which 
is  periodically  heard  from  the  gallery  on  the  appearance 
of  the  villain.  The  play,  which  gives  a  large  place  to 
the  chorvis,  suggestive  rather  of  the  Greek  drama  than 
the  opera,  is  geniiinely  Jewish,  and  the  language,  the 
Jewish  jargon  (Jiidisch).  The  better  type  of  play  usu- 
ally narrates  the  experiences  of  one  of  the  old  Jewish 
heroes,  portraying  to  the  intense  satisfaction  of  the  audi- 
ence his  triumphs  over  one  of  the  historic  oppressors 
of  the  Jews.  The  poorer  plays,  which  never  descend  to 
the  level  of  the  American  farce  comedy,  to  say  nothing 
of  burlesque,  treat,  for  example,  of  the  experiences  of  a 
recent  immigrant  in  adapting  himself  to  the  customs  of 
his  new  home.  The  delightful  unconventionality  of  the 
place  is  well  exhibited  l)etween  the  acts  when  the  vendor 
of  cakes  and  confections  and  fruits  makes  his  rounds. 
The   munching  of  these  delicacies  may  then  be  heard, 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  103 

accompanied  by  the  explosions  of  pop-bottles.  The 
noise  of  these  latter  falling  to  the  floor  often  disturbs 
the  more  sedate  in  the  midst  of  some  very  solemn  part. 
To  one  who  looks  below  the  surface,  however,  there  is 
almost  unalloyed  delight  in  the  pure,  simple  amusements 
of  these  people,  marred  only  by  the  regret  that  they  are 
not  hearing  their  old  classic  language  instead  of  the 
frightful  jargon.  Were  a  beautiful  literature  being 
expounded  by  these  earnest  players  and  singers,  the 
influence  on  the  auditors  would  be  incalculable.  As  it 
is,  the  presence  of  this  theatre  is  a  most  hopeful  social 
and  educational  sign. 

Balls  are  not  so  numerous  in  the  Ghetto  as  in  other 
foreign  quarters,  but  they  seem  to  be  equally  demoral- 
izing. There  is  a  seriousness  in  the  temper  of  these 
people  which  places  some  damper  on  amusements.  It  is 
also  true  that  the  home-life  removes  the  necessity  for 
public  amusement  so  strongly  felt  by  less  religious  races. 
The  great  centre  for  social  influence  among  the  Jews  is 
the  home.  This  is  admirably  illustrated  in  the  devotion 
of  the  children  to  the  home,  even  after  they  have  lost 
the  religion  of  their  parents.  Many  of  the  agnostics 
observe  the  religious  festivals  which  centre  in  the  home- 
circle,  simply  in  honor  to  their  parents.  It  must  of 
course  be  recognized  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
maintain  the  old  family  life  in  the  environment  of  the 
factory  system,  dependent  as  it  is  on  the  surrender  of 
the  individual  to  the  division  of  labor,  with  its  long 
hours  and  employment  of  women.  The  astonishing  fact 
is  the  preservation  of  so  much  of  the  tradition  of  the 
family  in  the  face  of  modern  social  disintegration. 

The  synagogue  is  another  important  social  centre.    To 


104  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

those  whose  chief  topic  of  conversation  aside  from  busi- 
ness is  the  Tahnud,  it  is  natural  that  the  Temple  should 
prove  a  social  inspiration,  especially  on  Saturday  and 
Sunday.  Even  more  important,  because  more  modest 
and  more  numerous,  are  the  Chevras,  or  smaller  religious 
congregations.  These  meet  in  some  private  house  or 
storeroom  appropriately  fitted  up  for  religious  services. 
On  Sunday,  as  well  as  Saturday  and  Friday  evening,  the 
men  of  these  congregations  spend  much  of  their  time  dis- 
cussing mooted  theological  points.  These  religious  bodies 
are  a  genuine  social  factor,  although  their  influence  is 
certainly  for  the  most  part  negative,  keeping  the  men 
from  the  saloon  or  similar  social  resort,  but  also  hinder- 
ing a  fuller  development  of  the  whole  man. 

The  social  influence  of  the  saloon  is  happily  small. 
It  cannot  be  ignored ;  but  in  summer  a  visitor  to  the 
Ghetto  is  struck  by  the  numerous  soda-water  fountains, 
showing  the  general  temperate  character  of  the  people. 
So  far  as  the  saloon  is  gaining  strength  it  is  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  traditions  of  the  Jews. 

Educational.  The  first  educational  force  to  be  men- 
tioned in  an  American  city  is  naturally  the  public 
school.  The  school  provisions  in  the  Ghetto  are  lament- 
ably inadequate.  The  insufficient  accommodation  and 
poor  instruction  of  the  public  schools  have  been  supple- 
mented by  a  privately  endowed  manual-training  school, 
the  "  Jewish  Training  School,"  which  has  already 
demonstrated  the  superiority  of  modern  pedagogical 
methods,  and  is,  in  fact,  the  educational  hope  of  the 
community.  On  Judd  Street,  between  Jefferson  and 
Clinton,  stands  a  fine  brick  building,  erected  by  wealthy 
Chicago  Jews  to  overcome   the  chief  deficiency  of  the 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  105 

persecuted  Jew,  the  lack  of  industrial  adaptability.  Tlie 
building,  which  has  a  seating  capacity  of  eight  hun- 
dred, contains  twenty-two  rooms.  The  machine-shop 
accommodates  thirty  boys,  and  the  joining-shop  thirty- 
five.  There  are  also  moulding,  drawing,  sewing,  and 
kindergarten  rooms,  and  a  physical  and  chemical  labora- 
tory. When  the  school  was  opened  in  October,  1890, 
there  were  sixteen  hundred  applicants,  of  whom  eleven 
hundred  were  accepted;  but  lack  of  accommodation 
compelled  the  sending  of  two  hundred  of  those  in 
better  circumstances  to  the  public  schools.  Since  then 
the  enrollment  has  never  been  less  than  nine  hundred. 
The  school  is  not  only  accomplishing  its  mission  in  pro- 
viding the  much-needed  manual  training,  but  is  doing 
what  the  public  schools  failed  to  do,  destroying  the  pre- 
judice in  favor  of  the  private  schools,  the  "Cheder," 
conducted  by  inexperienced  teachers,  called  by  the  chil- 
dren "  Rebbi,"  but  not  to  be  confused  with  the  Rabbis. 
These  Talmud  schools,  which  have  not  by  any  means 
been  exterminated,  are  held  in  little  stuffy  rooms,  where, 
with  insutficient  light,  young  boys  ruin  their  eyesight 
over  Hebrew  characters,  distort  their  minds  with  rab- 
binical casuistry,  impair  their  constitutions  in  unventi- 
lated  rooms,  and  defer  the  hopes  of  American  citizen- 
ship by  the  substitution  of  Jiidisch  for  English.  The 
able,  progressive  superintendent  of  the  Jewish  Training- 
School  and  his  carefully  chosen  associates  are  a  God- 
send to  this  people. 

The  Ghetto  students  who  advance  to  the  public  high 
schools  are  a  great  credit  to  the  community,  one  recently 
taking  the  highest  honors  in  the  gift  of  the  West  Divis- 
ion High  School.     There  were  formerly  night  sessions 


106       HULL-HOUSE  :maps  and  papers. 

held  during  the  winter  at  the  training-school,  but  lack 
of  funds  compelled  their  discontinuance.  Many  Jews 
attend  the  public  night-schools ;  and  the  classes  recently 
organized  at  the  Maxwell  Street  Settlement  are  over- 
crowded, although  but  a  very  few  deserted  the  public 
schools  for  them.  Among  the  classes  at  the  settlement 
are  civil  government,  with  an  attendance  of  fourteen, 
meeting  twice  a  week ;  German,  eleven  members,  twice  a 
week ;  arithmetic,  fifteen  members,  three  times  a  Aveek  ; 
beginning  English,  twenty-five  members,  meeting  three 
evenings  a  week ;  grammar,  fifteen  members,  twice  a 
week ;  George  Eliot,  fourteen  members,  twice  a  week  ; 
club  on  questions  of  the  day,  ten  members,  meeting 
weekly ;  book-keeping,  eighteen  members,  twice  a  week  ; 
physical  culture,  eight  members,  weekly ;  and  American 
history,  ten  members,  weekly.  A  literary  society  meets 
every  Sunday  evening ;  and  a  concert  is  given  on  the  first 
Sunday  afternoon  of  the  month,  the  other  Sunday  after- 
noons being  devoted  to  lectures. 

The  settlement  does  not  monopolize  the  literary  ac- 
tivities of  the  Ghetto.  There  are  other  independent 
literary  societies  accomplishing  a  very  desirable  work. 
There  is  a  society  for  the  study  of  Hebrew  literature. 
Lectiires  are  delivered  in  pure  Hebrew,  and  the  minutes 
are  kept  in  Hebrew.  The  Self  Educational  Club  has 
classes  in  United  States  and  Jewish  history,  civil 
government,  English  language  and  literature,  French, 
physiology,  bookkeeping,  arithmetic,  and  medical  and 
pharmaceutical   Latin. 

The  synagogue  must  be  mentioned  as  an  educational 
factor,  because  the  magnificent  literature  of  the  Hebrews 
is  there  brought  before  the  people,  whose  literary  taste 


riiE  CHICAGO  aiiKTTo.  107 

is  well  nigh  aniiiliilateJ  by  the  friglitCul  jargon  of  their 
daily  conversation. 

The  Jewish  j)aj)ers,  except  tlie  small  number  published 
abroad  in  Hebrew,  are  even  worse  in  their  educational 
influence  than  the  American  dailies,  owing  to  the  added 
demoralization  of  .Tudisch.  All  of  the  .Jewish  i)ai)ers 
have  a  too  foreign  tone ;  but  hapi)ily  with  the  ac(]uisi- 
tion  of  English  the  Jewish  paper  loses  its  interest. 

There  are  one  or  two  reading-rooms,  where,  in  twldi- 
tion  to  the  current  Jewish  papers,  much  good  Hebrew 
literature  is  found.  These  have  doubtless  a  greater  so- 
cial than  educational  value. 

Political.  There  are  several  '^  orthodox  "  Republican 
and  Democratic  clubs  in  the  district,  organized  mainly 
through  the  influence  of  the  ward  "  heelers."  The  recent 
Jewish  immigrant  seems  to  choose  the  Republican  party. 
It  is  not  easy  to  say  whether  the  idea  of  protection  at- 
tracts him,  or,  as  has  been  suggested,  he  has  become 
familiar  with  the  terra  "  republican "  abroad  as  con- 
trasted with  monarchical,  while  "  democrat  ''  suggests 
social  democracy  and  atheism.  His  choice  is  quite 
probably  a  sentimental  one.  At  the  opposite  pole  from 
these  blind  followers  of  the  politician  are  the  anarchists. 
There  is  quite  a  body  of  those  whose  memories  of  o\)- 
pression  form  their  present  political  creed.  An  agita- 
tion meeting  is  held  every  Sunday  in  some  good-sized 
hall,  attracting  sometimes  several  hundred  Jews.  The 
anarchism  of  the  leaders  is  almost  purely  philosophical, 
and  the  majority  of  the  adherents  manifest  their  belief 
simply  by  neglecting  the  polls.  The  socialists  probably 
outnumber  the  anarchists  by  a  very  small  margin.  The 
leaders  are  blind  in  their  devotion  to  the  Socialist  Labor 


108  IIULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

party,  and  bitter  in  tlieir  antagonism  to  the  anarcliists. 
They  seem  to  be  at  present  the  political  leaven  of  the 
community,  because  they,  at  least  the  leaders,  have 
thought  their  way  to  their  present  position,  and  they  are 
not  merely  dreaming,  but  are  engaged  in  active  politics, 
bringing  every  election  not  merely  votes  from  the  old 
parties,  but  new  voters  to  the  polls.  They  also  carry  on 
agitation  meetings  on  Sunday ;  but  their  educational  in- 
influence  has  been,  until  this  year,  limited  by  their 
bondage  to  Continental  socialism.  During  the  campaign 
of  1894  the  socialists  aided  the  People's  Party.  Poli- 
tics cannot  be  said  to  be  healthy  while  they  are  Jewish ; 
but  the  great  weakness  of  the  Jewish  leaders  is  their 
ignorance  of  English.  Few  of  them  can  make  a  good 
address  in  English.  It  is  some  gain,  however,  to  get 
the  civic  centre  out  of  the  synagogue  ;  and  it  must  be 
said  of  the  radical  political  leaders,  at  least,  that  they 
are  no  longer  the  abject  slaves  of  tradition. 

Religious.  The  synagogues  and  chevras  conserve  the 
religious  life  of  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Ghetto.  Their  power  is  not  so  great  as  that  of  the  con- 
gregations of  the  old  Continental  ghettos,  or  even  those 
of  the  present  London  Jewish  quarter ;  but  no  spark  of 
Reform  Judaism  has  yet  entered.  The  long  coats  and  the 
curls  before  the  ears,  so  familiar  in  Europe,  are  seldom 
seen  in  Chicago ;  but  the  Jewish  festivals  are  rigorously 
maintained,  and  the  ceremonial  restrictions  observed  even 
in  the  more  prosperous  families,  where  a  Christian  ser- 
vant helps  to  tide  over  the  Sabbath  without  sin  as  well 
as  without  physical  inconvenience.  Even  the  orthodox 
cannot  deny  the  growing  heterodoxy  of  the  Jews  of  the 
large   city,    despite    the   conservative    influence    of   the 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  109 

Ghetto.  On  the  wliole,  the  religion  of  the  Chicago  Ghetto 
seems  to  have  a  hygienic  value  of  a  certain  kind  ;  but  its 
ethical  significance  is  seen  only  in  its  effect  on  the  fam- 
ily life,  the  larger  social  duties  remaining  untouched. 
One  other  good  thing  ought  perhaps  to  be  credited  to  a 
religious  inspiration,  —  the  charity  of  the  poor  Jews  to 
their  poorer  neighbors  may  originate  in  religion  or  in 
race.  At  all  events,  the  Ghetto  rabbi  is  in  no  sense  a 
minister.  His  functions  could  as  weU  be  performed  by 
a  phonograph. 

The  Hebrew  papers  also  exert  a  conservative  religious 
influence. 

There  is  a  Hebrew  Christian  Mission  of  some  impor- 
tance on  Margaret  Street  and  Fourteenth,  near  the  west- 
ern limit  of  the  Ghetto.  A  neat  two-story  brick  building 
is  devoted  to  religious  meetings,  kindergarten,  sewing- 
classes,  and  similar  work,  while  the  missionary  lives  on 
the  second  floor.  Quite  a  number  of  Jews  visit  this 
place.  The  children  are  attracted  by  the  friendliness 
and  cheer  of  the  house  and  the  workers,  as  well  as 
by  the  little  forms  of  bribery  that  characterize  such 
enterprises ;  the  older  Jews,  always  eager  for  religious 
discussion,  attend  the  preaching  services.  A  small 
number  of  converts  is  made,  some  of  them  remaining 
faithful,  but  others  undoubtedly  attracted  merely  by  the 
hope  of  employment  or  other  reward.  There  can  V^e  no 
question  as  to  the  good  intentions  of  these  "  friends  "  of 
the  "  chosen  people ;  "  but  certainly  many  Jews  are  pau- 
perized by  such  effoi'ts,  as  well  as  by  the  counter-deeds 
of  zealous  Jews. 

The  Maxwell  Street  Settlement  and  the  Self  Educa- 
tional Club  are  religiously  independent. 


110  IIULL-UOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

The  evils  of  tlie  Ghetto  may  be  generalized  under 
two  heads,  —  the  environment,  including  the  wretched 
houses,  narrow  streets,  and  the  conditions  of  employment, 
over  which  the  Jews  have  little  or  no  control ;  and  the 
conservatism  of  the  majority  of  the  population.  Their 
conservatism  is  being  slowly  undermined.  The  use  of 
the  jargon  in  their  papers,  conversation,  the  Talmud 
schools,  business,  and  the  political  organizations,  is  being 
counteracted  by  the  social  and  educational  forces  already 
mentioned,  as  well  as  by  minor  influences.  The  public 
schools  ought  to  be  doing  much  more  than  they  are. 
Illiteracy  will  prevail  so  long  as  the  municipal  conscience 
slumbers.  Kevertheless,  the  greatest  need  of  the  Ghetto 
is  its  annihilation.  The  forces  working  for  good  in  it 
are  such  as  are  tending  to  exterminate  it.  Some  of  the 
brightest  minds  are  leaving  the  community  as  they  ad- 
vance in  professional  circles,  taking  prominent  positions 
as  lawyers,  physicians,  and  in  the  daily  press,  as  well  as 
in  business.  The  Jewish  Training-School  is  making  an 
important  contribution  in  preparing  the  coming  genera- 
tion for  broader  fields  of  industrial  activity.  The  Max- 
vs^ell  Street  Settlement  is  enlarging  the  social  life  and 
consciousness.  The  socialists  are  teaching  social  re- 
sponsibility. Some  of  the  native  qualities  of  the  Jew, 
such  as  love  of  home,  seriousness,  and  ambition,  are 
antagonistic  to  the  existing  conditions.  It  remains  to 
be  seen  whether  external  forces  will  teach  him  to  expand 
both  his  personal  and  social  horizon,  or  lead  him,  as  in 
the  past,  to  draw  himself  within  his  shell.  "  The  pov- 
erty of  the  poor  is  their  destruction."  The  annihilation 
of  the  Ghetto  means  wealth  to  the  Jew,  the  wealth  of 
Jesus  and  Euskin,  that  wealth  which  is  life.     But  the 


THE  CHICAGO   GHETTO.  Ill 

responsibility  is  not  altogether  or  chiefly  his.  The  qual- 
ities he  is  seen  to  possess,  even  under  the  distressing  en- 
vironment of  the  Chicago  (Jhetto,  would  enable  any  man 
to  be  free  were  opportunity  free.  If  the  versatile,  tena- 
cious Jew  leads  us  to  apprehend  this  fact,  we  may  find 
that  even  social  "  salvation  is  of  the  Jews." 


VI. 

THE  BOHEMIAN  PEOPLE  IN  CHICAGO. 


THE  BOHEMIAN   PEOPLE  IN  CHICAGO. 
BV    JOSEFA    HUMPAL    ZKMAX. 

The  neighborhood  of  Hull-House  was  once  the 
Prague  of  the  Bohemian  jjeople  in  Chicago.  The  dis- 
trict extending  from  Canal  to  Halsted,  and  from  Ewing 
to  Twelfth  Street,  was,  before  the  great  tire  of  1870,  the 
largest  and  best  settlement  of  Bohemians  in  the  city. 
"When,  after  that  fire,  the  city  began  to  extend  itself 
beyond  the  western  limits,  and  new  tracts  of  land  were 
measured  off  into  cheap  lots,  the  Bohemians,  who  love 
nature,  pure  air,  and  gardens,  sold  their  property  in  this 
crowded  part  of  the  city,  and  moved  to  the  new  region, 
where  they  might  invest  in  more  land,  and  so  afford  the 
luxury  of  a  garden.  The  movement  once  started,  it  was 
not  long  before  the  whole  community  changed  its  loca- 
tion, and  soon  there  grew  up  a  vast  colony,  "a  city 
within  a  city,"  spreading  from  Halsted  to  Ashland 
Avenue,  and  from  Sixteenth  to  Twentieth  Street,  and 
numbering  not  less  than  forty-five  thousand  Bohemians. 

The  colony  again  received  a  name ;  and  this  time  it 
was  in  honor  of  the  second  largest  city  of  Bohemia, 
Pilzen,  or  Pilsen.  Soon,  however,  it  grew  too  small  for 
the  flood  of  Bohemians,  which  reached  its  highest  tide 
in  the  years  1884-1885,  when  the  greatest  percent- 
age of  the  Bohemian  emigration  to  the  United  States 
poured  into  the  new  and  prosperous  Chicago.  It  is  now 
estimated  that  there  are  from  sixty  to  seventy  thousand 
P>ohemians  in  the  city ;  and  Chicago  has  the  distinction 

115 


IIG  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

of  containing  within  itself  the  third  largest  city  of 
Bohemians  in  the  world.  The  last  element  of  the 
rapidly  growing  settlement  is  now  forming  west  of 
Donglas  Park. 

The  first  Bohemian  emigrants  came  to  Chicago  in 
1851  and  1852,  and  possibly  even  earlier.  Soon  after  the 
revolution  in  1848,  many  of  the  enthusiastic  patriots, 
young  men  with  large,  liberty-loving  hearts,  forced  to 
flee  from  their  fatherland,  sought  horues  in  this  country. 
Among  those  earlier  emigrants  were  men  of  cultivation 
and  energy,  who  loved  liberty  so  well  that  they  were 
ready  to  undertake  all  manner  of  menial  service  for  her 
sake ;  and  thus  one  would  often  find  men  of  education 
and  high  social  standing  engaged  in  street-sweeping, 
cigarmaking,  and  other  humble  occupations;  and  grad- 
uates of  the  University  of  Prague  working  lor  $2.50 
and  $4.00  per  week. 

The  emigration  from  Bohemia  increased  after  every 
Continental  war,  and  especially  after  the  Austro-ltalian 
wars  of  the  '60's.  This  time  not  only  the  political 
refugees  sought  new  homes,  but  artisans  and  peasants 
also  began  emigrating.  People  were  tired  of  constant 
wars  that  werp  sapping  the  best  blood  of  their  nation, 
wasting  their  fields,  and  fastening  still  more  grievous 
tax  burdens  upon  the  shoulders  that  were  already 
crushed  beneath  those  they  had.  This  was  the  case  in 
most  European  countries,  and  especially  in  Bohemia. 

Tlie  social  and  political  upheavals,  the  exaggerated 
stories  of  American  wealth,  and  the  natural  feeling  of 
self-preservation,  were,  and  still  are,  the  causes  of  Bohe- 
mian emigration.  One  of  the  chief  causes  now  is  the 
military   law,   Avhich  drives   into  this  countr}'  a  stead}' 


THE  BOHEMIAN  PEOPLE  IX   CHICAGO.       117 

stream  uf  strong,  healthy,  and  able-bodied  men.  Hohemia 
has  never  sent  her  "  slums,"  as  some  politicians  assert, 
because  her  slums,  like  the  slums  of  other  nations,  never 
like  to  ''move  on;"  they  are  too  contented  in  their  in- 
dolence and  filth  to  be  willing  to  go  to  work,  or  to  take 
the  trouble  of  a  searvoyage.  Besides,  the  Austrian 
money,  although  exceedingly  hard  to  get  in  that  coun- 
try, is  so  depreciated  in  value,  that  it  takes  about  one 
thousand  gulden  to  move  a  family  of  eight  to  America. 

Often  good  artisans  were  compelled  to  work  for  low 
wages,  even  $1.25  a  day ;  still,  out  of  this  meagre  re- 
muneration they  managed  to  lay  a  little  aside  for  that 
longed-for  possession, — a  house  and  lot  that  they  could 
call  their  own.  "When  that  was  paid  for,  then  the  house 
received  an  additional  story,  and  that  was  rented,  so 
that  it  began  earning  money.  AVhen  more  was  saved, 
the  house  was  pushed  in  the  rear,  the  garden  sacrificed, 
and  in  its  place  an  imposing  brick  or  stone  building  was 
erected,  containing  frequently  a  store,  or  more  rooms  for 
tenants.  The  landlord,  who  had  till  then  lived  in  some 
unpleasant  rear  rooms,  moved  into  the  best  part  of  the 
house ;  the  bare  but  well-scrubbed  floors  Avere  covered 
with  Brussels  carpets,  the  wooden  chairs  replaced  by 
upholstered  ones,  and  the  best  room  received  the  added 
luxury  of  a  piano  or  violin. 

In  those  early  days  rent  was  high  and  flour  ten  dollars 
a  barrel,  but  they  bought  cheap  meat  at  four  cents  a 
pound,  coffee  at  twelve  cents ;  and  thus  by  dint  of  great 
economy  many  were  able  to  lay  aside  money  each  year, 
and  some  of  those  early  settlers  now  own  property  ran- 
ging in  value  from  fifty  thousand  to  two  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars. 


118  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPEBS. 

To  form  at  least  a  small,  even  if  very  iusufficient,  es- 
timate of  the  value  of  property  owned  by  the  Chicago 
Bohemians,  it  may  be  interesting  to  note  how  much  the 
working-people  have  invested  in  property  Avithin  the  last 
eight  years.  They  have  saved  it  in  the  Bohemian  build- 
ing and  loan  associations.  Before  these  societies  began 
their  activities,  the  Bohemians  had  already  a  large  com- 
munity of  not  less  than  fifty  thousand  inhabitants,  and 
owned  property  running  into  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
dollars  in  value.  The  reports  are  quoted  of  five  Bohe- 
mian building  and  loan  associations,  out  of  the  forty  or 
more  societies  that  are  in  existence.  From  the  year 
1885  to  1893  :  — 

The  society  "  Borivoj  "...  has  paid  $107,795.74 

The  society  "  Our '       ....  "            121,224.34 

The  society  "  Boliemia  "    ...  "              78,370.00 

The  society  "  Domov "      ...  "             80,247.47 

The  society  "  Slavic  "   ....  "           806,454.24 


Total §694,092.09 

We  can  safely  estimate  that  within  the  last  eight  years 
these  societies  have  disbursed  over  four  millions  of  dol- 
lars, which  is  all  invested  in  property  by  the  working- 
people. 

Before  1878  the  majority  of  the  Bohemians  Avere 
engaged  in  the  various  building-trades,  as  carpenters, 
bricklayers,  painters  ;  others,  again,  Avere  tailors,  and 
many  ordinary  laborers  Avorking  in  the  lumber-yards ; 
but  after  1878  they  began  entering  as  clerks  into  stores, 
law  offices,  and  A^arious  other  business  enterprises,  so  that 
to-day  there  is  not  a  profession  in  Avhich  Bohemians  are 
not  to  be  found.     Tlie  majority  of  the  Bohemians  are 


THE   BOHEMIAN    PEOPLE   IN   CHICAGO.      119 

artisans,  and  only  some  of  the  jjeasants  are  contented 
to  be  ordinary  laborers.  The  Bohemian  business-men 
command  the  respect  of  the  very  best  firms  in  the  city 
on  account  of  their  honesty  and  integrity  in  all  of  their 
business  relations.  Ikisiness-men  dealing  with  them 
readily  acknowledge  the  *'  bad  debt "  among  the  Bohe- 
mians to  be  very  rare. 

THK    LABOR    MOVEMENT. 

The  condition  of  the  ordinary  workingman  is  the 
same  as  that  of  his  German,  Irish,  or  Swedish  brother, 
the  only  probable  difference  being  that  the  Bohemian 
workingman  is  frequently  more  patient,  more  conserva- 
tive, and  less  progressive  in  reforms.  The  labor  move- 
ment, until  recently,  has  made  very  slow  progress  among 
them.  This  may  be  accounted  for  partly  by  the  mis- 
trust which  the  majority  of  the  people  have  of  strangers 
who  come  to  agitate  among  them,  and  also  because  cer- 
certain  so-called  leaders  were  neither  wise  nor  honest. 

One  of  the  chief  reasons  for  the  advance  made  of  late 
by  the  Bohemian  working-people  in  Chicago,  is  the  fact 
that  since  1880  some  leaders  have  come  from  the  native 
land,  where  the  labor  movement  has  been  more  success- 
ful ;  and  many  of  the  immigrants  who  have  arrived  here 
recently  are  better  accustomed  to  labor  unions,  and  know 
the  power  of  organization.  Then,  too,  the  various  news- 
papers that  have  been  started  to  agitate  reform  have 
grown  more  popular.  The  result  is,  that  there  are  now 
about  twenty-three  labor  organizations ;  and,  what  is 
more  encouraging,  the  majority  of  these  societies  are 
auxiliary  to  American  labor  unions,  such  as  the  brick- 
layers' and  other  building-trades,  or  the  clothing  unions. 


120  BULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

Two  typographical  co-operative  associations  publish 
dailies ;  one  the  Pravo-Lidu  ("  Eights  of  the  People  "),  the 
other,  Denni-Hlasatel  ("Daily  Herald  "),  which  has  the 
largest  circulation  of  all  the  Bohemian  dailies.  The  ma- 
jority of  the  workingmen  favor  the  eight-hour  move- 
ment, and  many  object  to  child-labor.  The  wages  earned 
are  the  same  as  those  paid  to  other  nationalities.  There 
is  not  a  single  working-women's  union ;  in  fact,  nothing 
whatever  has  been  done  for  the  Bohemian  working- 
woman.  No  one  has  deemed  her  worthy  of  any  effort ; 
and  with  the  exception  of  the  few  Americanized  tailor- 
esses  w^ho  belong  to  the  Tailors'  Union,  the  whole  mass 
of  girls  who  work  in  tailor-shops,  cigar-factories,  and 
candy-factories  have  seldom  been  near  a  "union  meet- 
ing." This  is  an  interesting  fact ;  for  as  long  as  these 
'hundreds  and  thousands  of  girls  shall  be  left  unorgan- 
ized and  uninformed,  they  will  always  be  a  great  stum- 
bling-block in  the  path  of  the  working-woman  of  Chicago. 

SOCIAL    LIFE. 

Although  the  Bohemians  have  better  food  and  more 
of  it  than  they  had  at  home,  they  lack  the  social  life. 
They  miss  the  free  garden  concerts  that  are  given  in 
almost  every  large  city  in  Bohemia ;  the  Sunday  walks, 
the  reading-rooms,  and  various  holiday  feasts  that  are 
almost  indispensable  to  the  Bohemian  temperament. 

This  yearning  after  more  social  life  has  led  them  into 
various  schemes  for  entertainment  which  are  not  always 
wholesome.  The  picnics,  with  uniformed  processions, 
led  by  brass  bands,  that  are  so  common  and  perfectly 
proper  in  Bohemia,  appear  strange  and  almost  ridiculous. 
The  Sunday  dances,  theatres,  and  concerts  that  stand  sub- 


THE   BO^E^^TAX   PEOPLE  IX   CHICAGO.       121 

stitute  for  the  walks  iu  the  tiehls ;  the  home  entertain- 
ments, when  families  make  calls,  and  amuse  themselves 
by  singing,  eating,  drinking,  and  telling  stories  —  are  to 
the  conservative  American  desecrations  of  the  Sabbath. 

Similar  amusements  are  popular  with  the  newcomers; 
but  as  they  live  here  longer,  and  become  more  American- 
ized, this  social  life  changes  and  becomes  more  formal, 
more  affected,  and  gradually  becomes  a  mixture  of 
American  and  European,  something  unlike  the  real 
Bohemian,  and  foreign  to  the  American ;  entirely  origi- 
nal, the  "  Bohemian-American." 

The  love  of  social  life  is  the  predominating  feature 
in  the  Bohemian  settlement.  Almost  every  Bohemian, 
man  and  woman,  belongs  to  some  society,  and  many  are 
members  of  several  orders.  Unlike  any  other  Slavonic 
nation,  the  Bohemian  women  have  a  great  many  organ- 
izations, both  educational  and  benevolent.  The  secret 
societies  of  ''  Jednota  Ceskych  Dam "  are  among  the 
most  popular  and  influential.  Their  object  is  at  once 
educational,  social,  and  benevolent ;  and  they  pay  yearly 
thousands  of  dollars  to  aid  the  orphan  children  of  their 
former  members.  xVmong  the  younger  women  the  gym- 
nastic societies,  known  as  *'  Sokolky,"  are  best  organ- 
ized. Women,  like  men,  also  separate  their  social  from 
their  religous  life,  and  have  organizations  of  freethink- 
ing  and  catholic  women. 

FAMILY    LIFE. 

The  family  life,  like  that  of  all  Slavonic  peoples,  is 
very  affectionate.  It  is  a  prevailing  custom  among  the 
working-class  that  the  father  and  children  should  give 
all  their  wasres  to  the  wife  or  mother.     Seldom  do  the 


122  HULL-UOUSE  MAPS   AXD   PAPERS. 

children  keep  their  earnings  and  pay  board ;  they  usu- 
ally all  work  and  live  together,  and  then  at  marriage 
each  child  receives  a  portion,  or  after  the  death  of 
the  parents  all  is  equally  divided  among  the  children. 
The  Bohemian  women  are  clean  and  thrifty,  economical 
housekeepers,  and  very  good  cooks.  They  know  the  art 
of  making  a  little  go  far ;  and  this  enables  them  to  feed 
large  families  with  comparatively  meagre  sums. 

The  Illinois  State  factory  inspector  has  said  that  of  all 
the  children  who  come  to  her  for  medical  examination, 
the  Bohemian  and  Jewish  children  are  the  best  fed  ;  al- 
though these  "  best-fed  "  children  who  work  in  the  factories 
are  usually  from  the  poorest  families,  where  frequently  as 
many  as  six  are  fed  on  less  than  five  dollars  a  week. 

It  is  not  the  general  custom  for  the  mothers  and  wives 
of  Bohemians  to  go  out  working ;  but  more  and  younger 
children  go  out  to  work  here  than  in  any  other  Bohe- 
mian community.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  there  is 
a  greater  demand  for  child-labor  in  Chicago,  the  supply 
for  which  is  recruited  from  the  ranks  of  the  needy  fami- 
lies of  all  nationalities.  It  is  a  great  temptation  to  all 
foreigners  to  sacrifice  their  children  ;  for  the  little  ones 
can  often  get  work  when  grown  people,  slow  to  learn  a 
new  language,  are  forced  to  be  idle.  The  Bohemian 
press  is  doing  all  in  its  power  to  discourage  this  objec- 
tionable child-labor,  and  urges  compulsory  educational 
laws. 

RELIGIOX. 

It  is  estimated  that  the  larger  half  of  the  Bohemian 
population  in  Chicago  is  Catholic,  while  the  rest  are 
non-church-goers.  The  Catholic  Bohemians  have  in 
Chicago    eight    parishes,    with    fine    church  edifices,  of 


THE    BOHEMIAN    PEOPLE    I .\    ClIirACO.       123 

which  tliat  of  St.  I'rokoijius,  conicr  of  All|ioi-t  aiitl  lOi^li- 
teeuth  Streets,  is  the  largest  and  most  eostly.  With 
the  school-buihliiigs,  convent,  clmrch,  and  rich  farms,  it 
has  property  the  value  of  which  exceeds  a  million  dol- 
lars. In  every  parish  there  is  a  l^ohemian  school,  where 
a  half-day  is  devoted  to  teaching  the  English  branches, 
and  the  afternoon  to  teaching  the  Bohemian  language, 
grammar,  and  catechism.  The  pupils  in  these  numticr 
not  less  than  two  thousand  seven  hundred. 

The  Bohemian  order  of  Benedictines  of  St.  J^iokopius 
parish  has  founded  a  Bohemian  College,  whi(di  is  equiv- 
alent to  the  common  high  school,  offering  the  same  cur- 
riculum ;  and  it  has  also  a  business  course,  all  in  the 
Bohemian  language.  In  each  parish  tliere  are  organ- 
izations of  men  and  women,  many  being  benevolent, 
others  more  purely  social  and  religious.  Tliere  are  four 
Catholic  Bohemian  newspapers  pvdjlished  in  ( -hicago,  — 
one  daily,  one  children's  ])aper,  the  other  two  weeklies. 
The  Catholics  have  their  own  halls,  theatres,  schools, 
and  cemetery. 

The  Protestants  have  two  Bohemian  churches  :  one  the 
Congregational  "Bethlehem,"  and  the  other  the  "John 
Huss  "  Methodist  Episcopal  church,  and  two  Methodist 
Episcopal  missions.  They  publish  two  papers  :  one  the 
Pravda,  Congregational ;  and  the  other  the  Kresfdnski 
Posel,  published  by  the  Bohemian  Methodist  pastors. 
These  churches  have  about  fifteen  hundred  members. 

One  of  the  many  reasons  why  the  Protestant  move- 
ment has  not  gained  a  stronger  hold  on  the  Bohemians 
is  that  it  was  initiated  by  strangers  or  foreigners  ;  but 
now  that  the  native  Bohemians  are  taking  hold  of  the 
work   themselves,  they  are   naturally   more  successful. 


124  HULL-HOUSE  MAI'S  AND   PAPERS. 

and  their  fellow-countrymen  are  moi'e  willing  to  listen 
to  the  message  uttered  in  their  own  tongue  by  their 
own  people. 

There  is  a  secular  society  known  as  the  "  Svobodna 
Olbec,"  which  has  its  speaker,  and  is  pronounced  in  its 
agnostic  philosophy.  One  of  its  chief  objects  is  to 
pulilish  agnostic  literature  and  arrange  anti-religious 
lectures.  This  society  numbers  about  one  hundred 
members. 

The  remainder  of  the  Bohemian  people  are  simply 
non-church-goers,  and  call  themselves  "freethinkers," 
most  of  them  -having  no  definite  philosophy,  only  cher- 
ishing antagonism  against  church  institutions.  Of  these, 
the  greater  part  merely  imitate  and  repeat  the  sayings 
of  the  newspapers,  many  of  which  are  edited  by  agnos- 
tics. These  people  have  suffered  so  much  in  Bohemia 
from  the  state  and  the  clergy,  that  when  they  once  feel 
themselves  relieved  from  the  "yoke  of  bondage,"  they 
are  not  afraid  to  voice  their  sentiments,  and  are  very 
bitter  in  their  hatred.  They  have  learned  to  associate 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  with  the  Austrian  house  of 
Hapsburg ;  and  the  oppressions  of  these  two  powers  have 
been  the  chief  reason  why  so  many  intelligent  people  in 
Bohemia,  especially  the  "  Young  Czechs,"  are  hostile  to 
the  church,  and  have  accepted  so  readily  the  materialism 
of  Western  Europe. 

The  freethinkers  have  four  Bohemian-English  schools, 
where  both  l^ohemian  and  English  are  taught.  They 
are  devoted  to  the  public  school,  and  have  the  Bohe- 
mian schools  only  as  an  offset  to  the  parochial  schools. 
The  children  usually  go  for  a  year  or  two  to  the  Bo- 
hemian school,  where  they  learn  to  read   and  write  in 


THE  BOHEMIAN  PEOPLE   L\    (IllCAdO.      125 

Bohemian,  and  then  enter  the  public  schools.  They 
have  separate  halls,  theatres,  and  societies.  When  tlie 
priests  refused  to  baptize,  marry,  or  bury  the  members 
of  these  societies,  they  separated  entirely,  and  now  even 
have  their  own  cemetery.  There  are  one  hundred  and 
sixty  societies,  all  of  which  have  some  benevolent  object, 
such  as  paying  death-benefits,  supporting  schools,  etc. 

Besides  these,  there  are  eleven  singing  and  dranuitic 
clubs.  The  latter  clubs  give  several  plays  during  the 
season,  and  the  money  made  is  donated  to  some  good 
cause.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  rivalry  between  these 
amateur  actors,  and  they  do  not  hesitate  to  try  their 
abilities  on  the  best  of  Shakespeare's  or  Sardou's 
dramas. 

The  freethinkers  publish  three  daily  newspapers  and 
seven  weeklies,  so  that  the  Bohemians  publish  in  all  six- 
teen newspapers  in  Chicago. 

CITIZENSHIP. 

In  1860  several  of  the  Bohemian-Slavonian  young 
men  organized  a  Lincoln  Kifle  Company,  and  this  was 
the  first  regiment  that  Avent  from  Chicago  to  fight  for 
the  Union ;  and  to-day  the  best  monument  in  the  Bohe- 
mian cemetery  speaks  of  the  patriotism  of  those  early 
immigrants,  who  had  already  learned  to  love  their 
adopted  country  so  well  as  to  be  ready  to  lay  down 
their  lives  for  its  preservation.  Year  after  year  their 
fellow-countrymen  gather  about  this  monument,  and 
with  flowers  and  addresses  honor  the  memory  of  their 
fallen  brethren. 

In  political  life  almost  all  the  old  settlers,  before  and 


126  UULL-nOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

after  the  war,  were  Republicans.  After  the  year  1880 
some  began  to  vote  tlie  Democratic  ticket ;  and  when  in 
1883  this  party  nominated  a  Bohemian  for  the  office  of 
aklerman,  it  got  the  lirst  real  hold  on  the  people  in  Chi- 
cago. The  first  political  recognition  given  them  was  a 
stroke  on  the  part  of  the  Democratic  wire-pullers  to  win 
the  Bohemian  vote.  It  "  took  ;  "  and  the  result  was  that 
to-day  out  of  the  twelve  thousand  Bohemian  votes  cast, 
eight  thousand  are  Democratic.  The  politicians  work  on 
the  people's  feelings,  incite  them  against  the  men  of  the 
other  party  as  their  most  bitter  enemies;  and  if  this 
doesn't  succeed,  they  go  to  work  deliberately  to  buy 
some.  Thus  adding  insult  to  injury,  they  go  off  and  set 
up  a  Pharisaic  cry  about  the  ignorance  and  corruption  of 
the  foreign  voters. 

As  everything  in  the  old  country  has  its  price,  it  is 
not  at  all  surprising  that  the  foreigners  believe  such  to 
be  the  case  in  this  also.  But  Americans  are  to  blame  for 
this  ;  for  the  better  class  of  citizens,  the  men  who  preach 
so  much  about  corruption  in  political  life,  and  advocate 
reforms,  never  come  near  these  foreign  voters.  They  do 
not  take  pains  to  become  acquainted  with  these  recruits 
to  American  citizenship  ;  they  never  come  to  their  politi- 
cal clubs  and  learn  to  know  them  personally ;  they 
simply  draw  their  estimates  from  the  most  untrust- 
worthy source,  the  newspapers,  and  then  mercilessly 
condemn  as  hopeless. 

The  Bohemian  citizens  in  Chicago  have  been  or  are 
represented  in  the  following  offices :  alderman,  county 
commissioner,  school-board,  public-library  board,  cor- 
poration counsel,  assessor,  and  State  legislature ;  while 
about  one  hundred  and  fifty  Bohemians  are  employed  in 


THE  BOHEMIAN  PEOPLE  IN   CHICAGO.       127 

the  service  of  the  city  government,  engaged  in  almost 
every  department. 

Since  1874  tliere  has  been  a  liohemian  department  in 
the  Public  Library,  which  now  numbers  four  thousand 
books. 

The  Bohemian  Republican  League  publishes  a  very 
good  politico-economic  j(jurnal  called  the  American  Citi- 
zen ;  and  many  of  the  younger  politicians  are  men  of 
culture,  who  take  vital  interest  in  social  and  economic 
questions,  and  are  thoroughly  Americanized.  This  is 
very  cheering,  and  promises  better  things  for  the  future. 

The  Bohemian  people  in  Chicago  are  called  "  clan- 
nish." They  may  deserve  that  epithet ;  but  who  is  to 
be  blamed  for  that  ?  In  the  early  days  it  was  natural 
that  they  should  settle  near  their  kinsmen  or  relations. 
Their  language,  being  Slavonic,  was  unlike  any  other 
about  them ;  and  they  were  at  a  disadvantage  as  com- 
pared with  the  Germans,  whose  native  tongue  is  so 
closely  allied  to  the  English  that  they  learn  the  latter 
readil}',  and  thus  appear  superior  to  their  Bohemian 
brethren.  Then,  too,  the  Germans,  being  their  tradi- 
tional enemies,  took  no  pains  to  enlighten  the  Ameri- 
can in  regard  to  them,  but  rather  tried  to  disparage 
them  in  every  way,  until  the  poor  inoffensive  Bohemian 
was  insulted  by  all  around  him  ;  so  that  in  time  he 
began  to  regard  every  one  non-Bohemian  as  his  enemy. 
As  was  said  before,  a  goodly  portion  of  the  blame  for 
this  rests  upon  the  American  press ;  for  in  times  of  po- 
litical campaigns  it  heaps  insult  or  flattery  without  dis- 
crimination. "We  ought  not  to  cater  to  the  foreigners 
at  the  cost  of  truth,  any  more  than  we  would  do  so  to 
our  own  children ;  yet  we  should  not  allow  our  own  pre- 


128  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

judices  to  iindermine  the  future  good  of  this  republic. 
Left  alone,  the  foreigners  are  harmless,  for  they  are  too 
divided  by  their  petty  traditional  national  hatreds  ;  but 
this  constant  aimless  baiting  of  the  American  pn-ess  gives 
these  great  masses  one  theme,  one  bond  of  sympathy, 
on  which  they  can  all  unite  ;  and  that  is,  —  hatred  of 
Americans. 

So  far,  the  Boheinians  are  free  from  any  sucli  feeling, 
and,  to  the  sorrow  of  their  European  brothers,  Ameri- 
canize almost  too  rapidly ;  so  that  frequently  the  second 
and  third  generations  do  not  even  speak  their  own  native 
language.  They  constitute  only  a  drop  in  the  mighty 
artery  of  foreign  blood  in  America;  but  their  leaders 
are  anxious  that  this  shall  be  pure  and  healthy,  and  in 
its  way  contribute  the  very  best  to  the  life  of  this  new 
and  mighty  nation. 


VII. 

REMARKS    UPON  THE  ITALIAN  COLONY 
IN   CHICAGO. 


REMARKS  UPON  THE  ITALIAN  COLONY  IN  CHICAGO. 
BY    ALESSANDRO    MASTRO-VALKKU). 

Italians  do  not  come  to  America  to  find  a  home,  as 
do  the  British,  Teutons,  Slavs,  and  Scandinavians,  but  to 
repair  the  exhausted  financial  conditions  in  which  they 
were  living  in  Italy,  or  to  make  more  money  if  they  were 
well-to-do.  They  leave  the  mother-country  with  the  firm 
intention  of  going  back  to  it  as  soon  as  their  scarsellas 
shall  sound  with  plenty  of  quihus.  And  if  they  remain 
here,  they  do  so  as  a  result  of  unforeseen  circumstances 
which  surprise  even  themselves,  and  which  they  finally 
accept. 

At  their  emljarkation  for  America  they  might  be  clas- 
sified as  temporary  immigrants;  but  Avhen  they  are  here, 
in  the  majority  of  cases  they  become  permanent  ones. 
The  sons  of  Italy  in  emigrating  do  not  sell  the  home, 
but  mortgage  it  for  money  to  pay  for  the  passage, 
because  they  dream  of  a  return  home  with  plenty  of 
money.  They  plan  the  improvements  they  will  make, 
and  that  they  will  spend  the  remainder  of  the  happy  life 
there.  How  different  from  the  people  of  other  national- 
ities, who  sell  everything  before  emigrating  !  Italians 
leave  the  members  of  the  family  behind,  with  the  promise 
that  they  will  send  money  to  them  to  live  on,  to  pay 
debts,  to  raise  the  mortgage.  But  after  some  years  they 
send  for  the  family,  and  settle  in  America  permanently, 
sometimes  becoming  American  citizens,  but  always  rc- 

131 


132  IIULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND  FAPERS. 

maining  Italians.  Their  children,  though  American- 
born,  will  always  be  "  incorrigible  "  Italians  becanse  of 
their  distinct  individuality,  and  of  their  sonorous  and 
difficult  Italian  names. 

On  arriving  in  this  country  they  swear  to  impose  upon 
themselves  all  sorts  of  sacrifices,  by  limiting  their  per- 
sonal expenses  to  the  minimum,  in  order  to  hasten  the 
realization  of  the  dream  of  a  happy  and  moneyed  return. 
Therefore,  if  their  way  of  living  in  the  crowded  tene- 
ment houses  of  the  American  cities  has  been  found  ob- 
jectionable, it  is  to  be  ascribed  to  this  proposed  economy, 
which  is  carried  to  the  extreme  limit  of  the  possible  or 
the  imaginable.  I  must  state,  before  going  farther, 
that  I  am  writing  of  the  Italians  of  the  peasant  class, 
and  particularly  of  the  provinces  of  Southern  Italy, 
which  furnish  the  bulk  of  the  Italian  immigration ;  also 
that  I  make  honorable  exceptions,  and  that  I  do  not 
wish  to  offend  against  the  Italian  name,  since  there  is 
not  in  America  an  Italian  more  incorrigible  than  I,  and 
a  Southern  Italian  too.  The  Italian  immigrants,  in  the 
majority  of  instances,  are  regarded  as  unskilled  laborers, 
and  are  employed,  accordingly,  in  building  railroads,  and 
in  earthwork,  such  as  excavation,  bedding,  etc. ;  and  as 
carriers.  For  this  reason  they  lind  work  during  only  a 
portion  of  the  year,  when  the  clemency  of  the  weather 
allows  such  work  to  be  done.  The  rest  of  the  year  they 
remain  idle  in  the  American  towns  whither  they  have 
floated,  and  where  they  sometimes  find  work,  incident- 
ally, as  snow  and  street  sweepers.  During  these  winter 
months  they  sometimes  experience  hardship,  and  partic- 
ularly when  work  begins  very  late  ;  so  much  so  that  a 
great  many  of  them  leave  for  Italy  in  time  to  be  there 


THE  ITALIAN   COLONY  IN   CHIC  AGO.  133 

for  Christmas,  and  return  in  ]\larcli  or  April,  ready  to 
work  as  before.  This  last  year,  owing  to  the  financial 
conditions  which  afflicted  this  country,  the  exodus  of 
Italians  has  been  great.  It  is  also  partly  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  price  of  passage  on  the  half-dozen  steam- 
ship lines  which  carry  Italian  immigrants  lias  been  very 
low,  owing  to  competition. 

Here  I  beg  to  be  allowed  to  defend  the  Italian  immi- 
grants from  the  classification  to  which  they  are  con- 
demned ;  viz.,  of  unskilled  laborers.  In  America  they 
might  be  very  good  farmers,  vine-growers,  gardeners, 
olive  and  fruit  growers,  and  stock-farmers,  just  as  they 
were  in  Italy,  in  their  own  home,  which  comprised  a 
field  for  grain  and  a  vineyard,  a  fruit  orchard,  and 
a  little  stockyard.  Or  they  may  have  been  employed 
in  the  same  capacity  by  large  farmers,  as  vine-growers, 
fruit-raisers,  olive-growers,  and  stock-farmers.  In  cer- 
tain parts  of  Southern  Italy,  owing  to  the  large  emi- 
gration of  peasants,  these  farmers  find  it  at  present 
difficult  to  carry  on  their  industries.  But  the  Italian 
immigrants,  unfortunately,  when  they  arrive  in  America 
do  not  continue  the  work  to  which  they  were  used  in 
Italy.  They  do  not  apply  themselves  to  tilling  the 
soil,  in  which  they  would  not  only  prove  skilful  labor- 
ers, but  examples  to  other  nationalities  (Frenchmen 
excepted),  as  those  who  have  happily  followed  this  prac- 
tice have  fully  demonstrated.  It  would  be  a  fortunate 
movement,  that  of  inducing  the  Italian  immigrants  to 
leave  American  towns  for  farming  pieces  of  land  in  a 
climate  congenial  to  them  and  like  that  of  their  native 
country,  and  where  the  land  would  yield  a  variety  of 
crops  all  the  year  round.     Then  their  instinct  of  picking 


134  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   ANL>   PAPERS. 

would  have  full  sway  in  a  more  decent  manner  than 
now,  when  many  of  tlieni,  finding  in  the  American 
towns  nothing  comely  to  pick,  pick  rags,  cigar-stumps, 
bones,  and  other  filthy  things  from  alleys  and  ash  and 
garbage  boxes. 

It  must  be  added  that  such  filthy  trades  are  practised 
with  ingenuousness  and  nonchalant  persistence  worthy 
of  a  better  cause.  The  Italian  instinct  for  picking  is 
notable.  In  Italy  they  are  used  to  pick  wood  from  the 
forest,  weeds  from  the  fields,  wheat  and  grain  after  the 
mowers,  fruit  from  the  trees,  insects  from  the  bark  of 
the  trees  and  vines,  for  which  they  are  paid  so  much 
per  hundred  ;  herbs,  beans,  pease,  and  other  truck-farm 
products  from  the  plants ;  the  seeds  of  weeds  from 
wheat,  oats,  rye,  etc. ;  herbs  from  the  woods,  and  many 
other  things  which  the  average  American  would  never 
think  of  using  in  any  way. 

In  my  opinion  the  only  means  for  the  regeneration  of 
the  Italian  immigrants  from  the  state  in  which  they 
nowadays  find  themselves  in  the  crowded  districts  of 
the  American  cities,  is  to  send  them  to  farming.  Ail 
other  means  are  mere  palliatives.  Then  they  will  begin 
to  belong  to  the  same  class  of  citizens  to  which  they  did 
at  home,  the  first  producers  ;  that  class  which  is  the 
backbone  of  the  country-,  and  most  worthy  of  respect. 
The  result  of  the  present  combination  of  circumstances 
of  the  Italian  peasant  is  in  Chicago  the  same  as  in  an}' 
other  American  town,  except  on  the  Pacific  coast. 

The  Italians  of  Chicago  number  25,000,  mostly  be- 
longing to  the  peasant  class.  Those  Avho  have  grown 
with  the  town  are  in  prosperous  circumstances ;  and, 
with  few  exceptions,  they  came  from  the  north  of  Italy, 


THE  ITALIAN    COLONY  IN   CHICAGO.         135 

and  particularly  from  the  Riviera.  They  do  not,  for  the 
most  part,  form  an  intelligent  class.  They  are  neither 
entrejireneurs  nor  producers.  They  have  not  been  identi- 
fied with  the  wonderful,  intelligent  progress  of  the  city ; 
but  they  have  grown  rich  with  it  from  the  increase  in 
value  of  real  estate,  or  from  their  business  of  selling 
fruit.  The  children  are  no  better  than  their  parents.  A 
case  was  discovered  recently  of  a  young  Italian  worth 
8100,000  who  was  contented  to  be  simply  a  policeman. 
Behind  bar-room  counters,  there  are  young  Italians  who 
are  worth  even  more  money.  Some  of  the  present  gen- 
eration deserve  praise  because  they  have  entered  the  lib- 
eral professions  or  legitimate  manufacturing  enterprises. 
The  Italian  colony  consists  of  professional  men,  —  news- 
paper-men, bankers,  publicans,  employment  agents,  law- 
yers, interpreters,  midwives,  musicians,  artisans,  laborers, 
sweaters'  victims,  grocers,  bakers,  butchers,  barbers,  mer- 
chants, etc.,  all  of  which  are  necessary  one  to  another, 
and  cannot  bear  separation  without  disorganization.  It 
is  a  town  Avithin  a  town,  a  stream,  a  rivulet  in  the  sea, 
of  such  intense  force  of  cohesion  that  it  cannot  be 
broken,  as  the  mighty  ocean  cannot  break  the  Gulf 
Stream. 

The  immigrant  Italians  are  lodged  by  Italian  inn- 
keepers, and  fed  by  Italian  restaurateurs.  Italian  publi- 
cans quench  their  thirst.  Italian  employment  agents  or 
"  bosses "  find  them  work,  and  group  them  and  take 
them  to  the  country,  where,  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
they  board  them,  and  act  as  interpreters  between  the 
contractor  and  them.  Italian  agents  or  bankers  send 
their  money  to  their  families  in  Italy,  and  sell  them 
tickets  for  the  latter  when  they  come  to  join  them  in 


136  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

America.  Italian  doctors  are  called  in  case  of  sickness, 
and  Italian  druggists  furnish  the  curative  drugs,  which 
must  bear  Italian  names  in  order  to  be  trusted.  Italians 
manufacture  macaroni  as  nearly  as  possible  like  that 
of  Italy;  and  Italian  grocers  furnish  cheese,  oil,  olives, 
bologna,  bread,  and  many  other  Italian  delicacies  or 
necessaries.  Their  priests  must  be  Italians ;  also  their 
lawyers  and  their  undertakers.  These  streams  and 
rivulets  run  into  the  midst  of  the  mare  viagnum  of 
Chicago,  about  South  Clark  Street,  and  Third,  Fourth, 
Pacific,  and  Sherman  Avenues,  and  Dearborn  Street  be- 
tween Harrison  and  the  Twelfth  Street  viaduct ;  about 
Illinois,  Michigan,  Indiana,  and  La  Salle  Streets,  where 
the  Italian  Church  of  the  Assumption  is  located  ;  about 
West  Indiana,  Ohio,  Huron,  Sangamon,  and  North  Hal- 
sted  Streets,  and  Milwaukee  and  Austin  Avenues  ;  about 
South  Halsted,  Ewing,  Forquer,  Delvoven,  and  Twelfth 
Streets  and  the  river.  Smaller  streams  run  in  other 
directions.  Each  is  well  marked,  and  bears,  more  or 
less,  a  reputation  of  its  own. 

The  charge  of  filthiness,  so  often  made  against  Ital- 
ians of  this  class,  is  to  be  attributed  partly  to  their 
special  condition  of  life  in  the  crowded  tenement  houses 
of  our  American  towns,  which  are  the  reverse  of  hy- 
gienic in  their  construction,  both  in  regard  to  the 
material  used,  which  is  poor  and  easily  impregnable, 
and  as  to  the  disposition  of  space,  which  does  not  con- 
duce to  healthful  living.  The  accusers  ought  to  consider 
that  those  Italian  immigrants  come  from  the  open 
country,  or  from  villages  where  the  houses  are  built 
of  stonemasonry  less  easily  heated  and  cooled,  and  hav- 
ing wide  corridors  differently  disposed  with  doors  and 


THE    ITALIAN    COLOyV   7A'    VIIU  AdO.         137 

windows,  which  give  room  for  plenty  of  light  and  air. 
The  promiscuity  of  sex  and  of  strange  peoph3  force 
sighs  from  the  hearts  of  Italian  women,  mothers  of 
girls,  on  first  setting  foot  into  the  "  infernal  bolges  "  of 
South  Clark  Street  and  Fourth  Avenue.  '■'^  Aladonnaviia, 
qxii  dehho  vivere?^'  I  have  heard  sigh  an  Italian  woman 
on  one  of  these  occasions,  looking  at  her  girls,  while 
her  heart  was  full  of  dismay.  It  is  the  custom  of  my 
part  of  Italy  to  whitewash  the  houses  with  lime  in  Sep- 
tember, and  before  Easter,  or  in  May,  at  the  time  of 
moving.  It  is  also  the  custom  that,  on  the  Saturday 
before  Easter,  the  priest  goes  in  ponipa  magna  to  bless 
the  houses  of  the  district  assigned  to  him,  one  by  one. 
For  such  an  occasion  the  houses  of  even  the  poorest 
people  are  made  clean  from  roof  to  cellar  in  honor  of 
the  sanctity  of  the  visitor  who  comes  to  bless  the  build- 
ings, the  persons,  and  the  animals  in  the  stable,  in  the 
name  of  God  ;  therefore  he  is  received  with  marked  and 
religious  reverence.  Presents  of  eggs  and  money  are 
made  to  him ;  the  eggs  are  taken  care  of  by  the  priest's 
servant  maid,  who  attends  in  her  picturesque  peasant's 
costume,  and  puts  them  in  a  straw  basket.  A  boy  re- 
sponds to  the  Latin  prayers,  and  puts  the  money  into 
a  silver  bucket  containing  the  blessed  water  and  the 
sprinkler.  When  a  boy,  I  often  attended  to  act  in  this 
capacity,  and  I  remember  with  pleasure  the  neat  appeai- 
ance  of  the  poorest  houses.  When  I  found  myself  in 
an  American  tenement  house,  inhabited  by  Italians,  at 
the  sight  of  the  filth  that  appeared  before  me  I  could 
not  help  thinking  with  a  sense  of  riplanto  amarisslmo  of 
the  houses  of  the  same  people  as  I  have  seen  them  on 
those  good  Saturdaj'^s.     Most  certainly  the  same  condi- 


138  UULL-IIOrsE  MAPS  Ayj)   PAPERS. 

tions  would  uot  exist  among  these  people  on  a  farm  in 
the  country. 

The  greed  of  gain  which  has  developed  among  the 
Italians  causes  most  of  the  women  to  employ  all  their 
spare  time  in  sewing  clothing,  in  order  to  add  their  little 
share  to  the  earnings  of  the  husband  and  sons.  This 
is  a  serious  detriment  to  them,  and  is  one  cause  of 
their  filthy  homes,  which  they  have  no  time  to  care  for. 
B}''  reason  of  the  same  greed,  boys  and  girls  are  sent  to 
sell  newspapers  in  the  streets,  and  sometimes  to  beg. 
The  skilled  Italian  in  Chicago  gets  as  much  money 
as  the  American  skilled  laborer.  The  unskilled  Italian 
laborer  gets  from  SI. 00  to  §1.75  a  day.  As  I  have 
stated  before,  they  economize  in  every  way  they  can ; 
but  when  the  occasion  arises  which  pleases  them,  they 
spend  their  money  like  water.  They  are  hard  workers, 
and  not  inclined  to  be  vicious.  Their  women  are  notably 
virtuous. 

Vltalia,  the  leading  Italian  newspaper  of  Chicago, 
inaugurated  with  its  first  number  a  veritable  crusade 
against  the  two  offences  of  ragpicking  and  sending  boys 
and  girls  in  the  streets,  and  was  instrumental  in  holding 
a  mass-meeting  for  compulsory  education  in  Chicago, 
which  was  part  of  a  movement  in  the  course  of  which 
the  principle  of  compulsory  education  was  adopted  by 
the  Board  of  Education,  led  by  the  late  Charles  Komin- 
sky.  The  mass-meeting  ended  in  the  appointment  of  a 
committee  of  prominent  Italians  to  call  upon  Ma^'or 
Cregier  and  upon  the  council,  requesting  the  interfer- 
ence of  the  police  in  the  ragpicking  of  the  Italians. 
Briefly  speaking,  an  ordinance  was  passed  and  enforced ; 
but  the  ragpickers  formed  a  sort  of  political  association, 


THE  ITALIAN   COLONY  IN  CHICAGO.  139 

and  let  the  party  in  power  understand  that  they  were 
voters  who  would  vote  against  that  party  at  the  next 
election  if  the  interference  of  the  police  in  their  occupa- 
tion was  not  stopped.  Immediately  the  police,  by  secret 
orders,  let  the  ragpickers  alone.  No  lobbyists  at  Wash- 
ington could  have  worked  the  scheme  more  effectually. 
This  Avill  answer  the  question  whether  Italians  have 
Americanized  themselves,  and  to  what  extent. 


YIII. 
THE   COOK   COUNTY   CHARITIES. 


THE  COOK  COUNTY  CHARITIES. 

I5Y    JULIA    C.     LATHllor, 
Member  of  the  Illinois  State  Board  of  Charities. 

As  the  study  of  these  maps  reveals  an  overwhelming 
proportion  of  foreigners,  and  an  average  wage-rate  so 
low  as  to  render  thrift,  even  if  it  existed,  an  ineffective 
insurance  against  emergencies,  we  are  led  at  once  to  in- 
quire what  happens  when  the  power  of  self-help  is  lost. 
This  district  was  chosen  by  the  government  for  investi- 
gation because  it  was  believed  to  represent  fairly  the 
most  untoward  conditions  of  life  in  Chicago ;  it  was 
selected  as  a  "  slum,"  and  is  that  portion  of  the  city 
containing  on  its  western  side  the  least  adaptable  of 
the  foreign  populations,  and  reaching  over  on  the  east 
to  a  territory  where  the  destructive  distillation  of  mod- 
ern life  leaves  waste  products  to  be  cared  for  inevitably 
by  some  agency  from  the  outside.  The  preponderance 
of  unskilled  labor  necessarily  means  the  weakness  of 
trade  unions  and  mutual  benefit  societies ;  in  short,  the 
inability  to  organize  and  co-operate.  When  we  inquire, 
then,  what  provision  is  made  to  meet  sickness,  accident, 
non-employment,  old  age,  and  that  inevitable  accident, 
death,  we  are  asking  wluit  some  outside  agency  per-~ 
forms.  Here  is  a  foreign  population,  living  in  every 
sort  of  mal-adjustment,  —  rural  Italians,  in  shambling 
wooden  tenements ;  Russian  Jews,  whose  two  main  re- 
sources are  tailoring  and  peddling,  quite    incapable   in 

143 


144  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

general  of  applying  themselves  to  severe  manual  labor 
or  skilled  trades,  and  hopelessly  unemployed  in  hard 
times ;  here  are  Germans  and  Irish,  larggly  of  that  type 
which  is  reduced  by  .drink  to  a  sqnalor  it  is  otherwise 
far  above.  Here  amongst  all,  save  the  Italians,  flour- 
ishes the  masculine  expedient  of  temporary  disap- 
pearance in  the  face  of  non-employment  Or  domestic 
complexity,  or  both ;  paradoxically  enough  the  intermit- 
tent husband  is  a  constant  factor  in  the  economic  prob- 
lem of  many  a  household.  In  this  region  west  of  the 
river,  and  stretching  on  into  the  seventh,  eighth,  and 
eighteenth  wards,  there  are  many  streets  where  foreign 
tongues  are  more  spoken  than  English  ;  thousands  of 
people  who,  having  their  own  shops  and  churches  and 
theatres  and  saloons,  may  be  said  hardly  to  come  in 
touch  with  the  commonwealth  of  which  some  immigra- 
tion company  has  made  them  an  unconscious  part  until 
they  are  given  over  as  the  wards  of  its  charity.  To 
meet  the  needs  of  such  a  city  population,  a  whole  system 
of  charitable  institutions  has  grown  up  ;  though  they  are 
carried  on,  not  by  the  city  of  Chicago,  but  by  the  county 
of  Cook.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  much  private  char- 
ity supplements  the  county's  efforts,  or  rather  that  the 
county's  provision  is  accepted  when  all  the  resources 
of  private  charity  and  of  neighborly  aid  have  been  ex- 
hausted. Indeed,  one  may  as  well  admit  in  starting, 
that  the  capacious  bosom  of  the  county  is  sought  with 
much  reluctance,  even  by  the  population  of  which  we 
speak ;  and  while  this  population  represents  the  last  de- 
gree of  social  submergence,  the  county  is  in  turn  its  der- 
nier ressorf.  There  is,  doubtless,  a  certain  satisfaction 
to  the  philanthropist  and  the  sociologist  alike,  in  having 


THE  COOK  COUNTY   CHARITIES.  145 

touched  bottom,  reached  uhimate  facts ;  and  this  in  a 
sense  \ve  have  done  when  we  have  reached  the  county 
institutions.  These  are  the  iuhrniary,  the  insane  asy- 
lum, the  hospital,  the  detention  hospital,  and  the  county 
agency.  The  county  maintains  at  Dunning,  just  across 
the  city  limits  line  on  the  north-west,  the  infirmary  and 
the  insane  asylum,  together  constituting  the  poorhouse  ; 
the  intirmary  with  an  average  population  of  about  1,500, 
and  the  asylum  with  from  800  to  1,000  inmates.  To 
show  the  relation  of  the  infirmary  population  to  the 
population  of  this  district,  it  is  enough  to  state  that  of 
its  5,051  admissions  during  the  year  189.3,  there  were 
3,5Go  persons  of  foreign  birth.  The  nativity  records 
show  that  of  this  number  Ireland  furnishes  1,457 ;  Ger- 
many, 727  ;  England,  299  ;  Sweden,  202  ;  Canada,  183  ; 
Scotland,  135  ;  Norway,  116;  Poland,  80  ;  Bohemia,  53  ; 
Austria,  61 ;  Denmark,  53  ;  Switzerland,  41 ;  Italy,  40 ; 
Eussia,  37  ;  France,  28  ;  Holland,  23 ;  the  balance  being 
made  up  from  thirteen  countries. 

The  infirmary  is  a  great  brick  building,  witli  many 
well-lighted  wards,  steam-heated  and  clean.  It  is 
fronted  by  a  grass  plat,  with  trees  and  fiower-beds,  and 
the  open  country  stretches  back  for  miles,  giving  a  good 
sweep  for  air  and  sunshine.  There  is  a  se})arate  mater- 
nity ward,  an  attractive  and  comfortable  brick  cottage, 
at  a  distance  of  several  hundred  feet  from  the  main 
building. 

A  very  little  work  is  required  of  etudi  inmate  to  keep 
the  place  in  order.  There  is  a  hired  attendant  in  every 
ward,  and  over  the  men  a  supervisor,  and  over  the 
women  a  supervisoress.  The  infirmary  and  the  insane 
asylum  are  both  under  the  control  of  one  su])(Mintendent ; 


146  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

and  there  is  a  corps  of  book-keepers  and  clerks  who  are 
necessary  to  keep  accounts  and  registers,  and  do  the  office 
work  required  in  carrying  on  the  affairs  of  a  community 
of  this  size. 

The  head  cooks  are  regiilar  employees,  as  are  all  the 
directing  powers  ;  but  most  of  the  work  of  the  laundry, 
the  wards,  the  bakery,  the  dining-room,  the  sewing- 
room,  is  performed  by  the  inmates.  In  the  work  of  the 
farm  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  as  many  men  in- 
mates as  possible  of  both  the  infirmary  and  the  insane 
asylum  are  utilized.  Divided  among  such  numbers,  there 
are  still  many  hours  of  listless  idleness  for  hundreds  of 
these  people,  men  and  Avomen  alike.  It  is  to  be  noted 
at  once  that  there  are  no  shops,  no  provision  for  in- 
dustries. The  clothing  is  the  usual  cotton  found  in 
such  institutions;  and  that,  together  with  the  bedding 
furnished,  is  under  ordinary  circumstances  abundant 
for  warmth  in  buildings  well  heated  by  steam  as  are 
these. 

The  women's  wards  are  never  crowded  as  are  the 
men's.  By  some  curious  law  of  pauperism  and  male  ir- 
responsibility, whose  careful  study  offers  an  intermin- 
able task  to  any  loving  collector  of  data,  men  are  in  a 
great  majority  in  poorhouses.  In  the  Cook  County 
infirmary  we  find  the  following  proportions  :  — 

January  4,  1894,  1,455  men  and  oOG  women. 
January  4,  189:},  1,15(5  men  and  380  women. 
January  4,  1892,  1,108  men  and  321  women. 
January  4,  1891,  1,021  men  and  409  women. 

A  curious  indication  of  the  effect  of  hard  times  is 
shown  in  the  sudden  increase  of  299  in  the  male  popula- 


THE   COOK   COU^^TV   CUARITIES.  147 

tion,  ami  of  only  10  among  the  woinen,  — nearly  25  per 
cent  in  the  first  case,  and  a  little  over  4  per  cent  in  the 
second,  from  January,  1893,  to  January,  1894. 

There  is  a  ohaj)el,  in  ^vhich  a  kindly  old  Catholic  priest 
and  various  I'rotestant  clergymen  alternately  officiate. 
The  solemn  little  room  is  always  open ;  and  after  the 
early  winter  supper,  old  people  clamber  painfully  up- 
stairs to  say  their  evening  prayers  before  its  altar.  For 
one  instant  the  visitor  is  hushed  as  he  stands  before  the 
door,  watching  the  straggling  little  procession  of  human 
wastage  entering  the  dim  apartment,  and  feels  a  thrill 
of  thankfulness  that  these  poor  evidences  of  defeat  and 
failure  cherish  a  belief  in  some  divine  accounting  more 
individual  and  generous  than  that  of  tlie  sociologist  and 
statistician. 

In  a  winter  so  unprecedented  as  that  of  189.3-1894, 
the  men's  wards  are  always  full,  many  of  them  fearfully 
over-crowded,  and  certain  of  the  hallways  are  some- 
times nightly  filled  with  straw  ticks  for  sleepers  who  can- 
not be  accommodated  in  the  wards.  In  the  men's  and 
women's  Avards  alike,  the  beds  are  set  closely,  and  at 
best  allow  only  a  chair  and  a  few  feet  by  the  window  for 
each  occupant.  Ward  o  B,  with  beds  crowded  together, 
others  made  on  the  floor,  and  filled  with  a  melancholy 
company  of  feeble  and  bedridden  men  and  idiot  chil- 
dren, must  haunt  the  memory  of  whoever  has  seen  it. 

The  surgical  wards  are  of  course  less  crowded,  and 
are  clean.  The  men's  and  women's  consumptive  wards 
are  sunny  and  clean,  and  not  painfully  crowded.  There 
are  two  resident  physicians,  a  man  and  a  woman,  and 
their  services  are  needed  for  the  chronic  and  hopeless 
cases  sent  to  the  iniirnuiry  from  the  Cook  County  Hos- 


148  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

pital,  and  these  would  alone  fill  a  small  hospital.  There 
are  here  usually  from  fifty  to  seventy-five  children,  of 
whom  a  large  proportion  are  young  children  with  their 
mothers,  and  very  few  of  whom  are  for  adoption.  The 
remainder,  perhaps  a  third,  are  the  residiiiun  of  all  the 
orphan  asylums  and  hospitals,  children  whom  no  one 
cares  to  adopt  because  they  are  unattractive  or  scarred 
or  sickly.  These  children  are  sent  to  the  public  school 
across  the  street  from  the  poor-farm.  Of  course  they 
wear  hideous  clothes,  and  of  course  the  outside  children 
sometimes  jeer  at  them ;  and  then  if  they  are  stout  little 
lads  like  Jim  Crow,  they  doubtless,  as  did  he  one  day? 
teach  courtesy  to  their  tormentors  with  their  fists. 

And  now  what  impression  does  the  visitor  receive  who 
sees  the  infirmary,  not  as  to  the  great  problems  of 
pauperism  and  crime,  for  the  study  of  which  this  place 
offers  infinite  opportunity;  not  upon  the  value  or  effi- 
ciency of  our  system  of  caring  for  the  dependent,  but 
simply  as  to  whether  the  work  undertaken  is  adequately 
and  reasonably  performed  ?  Do  we  have  difficulty  in  un- 
derstanding the  universal  dread  of  the  ''  County  "  ?  ^ 

Let  us  leave  quite  one  side  considerations  as  to  the 
moral  deserts  of  these  people,  admitting  even  that  most 
are  brought  here  by  their  own  misbehavior  or  that  of 
those  responsible  for  them.  The  county  of  Cook  has 
them  as  wards.  The  determining  standard  of  treatment 
is  not  •'  what  they  have  been  accustomed  to,"  but  what 

1  The  one  exception  in  the  range  of  my  acquaintance  to  this  dislike 
of  the  infirmary  is  on'  the  part  of  a  little  Irisli  woman,  a  soldier's 
widow,  who  is  lame  and  feeble,  but  who  by  the  aid  of  a  small  pension 
is  able  to  fee  the  attendants  a  bit,  and  who  moves  from  the  infirmary 
to  some  humble  friend  in  the  city  and  back  asain  with  the  elegance 
and  dignity  which  only  leisure  and  money  can  bestow. 


THE   COOK   COUXTl"   ClIAIlITIES.  149 

experience  and  modern  science  show  to  be  essential  to 
the  proper  care  of  such  a  mass.  The  absolute  lack  of 
privacy,  the  monotony  and  dulness,  the  discipline,  the 
enforced  cleanliness,  —  these  are  the  inevitable  and,  in 
the  opinion  of  some,  the  wholesome  disadvantages  of  the 
infirmary  from  the  standpoint  of  the  inmate.  There  is 
not  a  common  sitting-room  for  men  or  for  women  in 
the  whole  great  place ;  the  supply  of  books  and  papers  is 
so  small  as  scarcely  to  be  visible.  Occasionally  one  may 
see  a  group  of  men  playing  cards  upon  a  bed  in  one 
corner  of  a  ward,  and  the  old  fellows  have  a  tobacco 
allowance ;  but  any  provision  for  homely  comfort,  for 
amusements  or  distractions  from  themselves  and  their 
compulsory  neighbors,  is  wanting  alike  for  the  most 
decent  and  the  most  worthless. 

If  husbands  and  wives  are  obliged  to  come  to  the 
infirmary,  they  are  always  separated,  no  matter  how 
aged  and  infirm,  nor  how  blameless.  How  painful  this 
separation  may  be,  is  indicated  by  the  attitude  of  an  old 
Irish  couple  of  my  acquaintance.  They  are  past  the 
power  of  self-support ;  their  onl}^  child,  a  son,  is  an  in- 
curable lunatic,  confined  at  Dunning.  At  one  time  they 
held  title  to  a  house  and  lot,  —  '■  worth  $6,000  now," 
the  old  woman  says  with  mournful  pride,  —  and  are,  to 
judge  from  internal  evidence,  and  from  the  testimony  of 
the  neighbors,  honest,  decent  people.  AVhen  Dunning 
was  suggested  to  them  they  were  panic-stricken ;  and 
the  old  woman  ;  who  is  ninety  odd,  said,  "  Oh,  he'll  have 
to  go  in  with  the  men ;  I'll  have  to  go  in  with  the 
women,  and  all  our  own  clothes  will  be  taken  away  from 
us.  I  can  somehow  sort  o'  do  for  myself;  but  he  is 
somehow  sort  o'  shiftless  like,  and  he  can't.     I'll  feel 


150  HULL-HOUSE  31  APS   AXD   PAPEBS. 

sorrier  for  liim  than  for  me.  I  am  older  than  he  is,  but 
I  can  get  along  better'n  he.     Let  us  stay  here." 

The  meals  are  served  three  times  daily,  in  a  common 
dining-room,  from  bare  tables  scrubbed  white,  and  the 
seats  are  backless  benches.  The  room  is  so  small  that 
the  benches  are  filled  and  refilled,  first  with  the  women 
and  then  with  the  men,  until  all  have  eaten.  The  food 
is  perhaps  more  nourishing  than  many  had  at  home,  but 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case.  Its  original 
quality  is,  in  fact,  good  or  aggressively  bad,  depending 
upon  the  administration.  The  cooking  is  bad,  —  tea 
boiled  forty-five  minutes,  mushes  cooked  very  hard, 
three-quarters  of  an  hour,  cheap  cuts  of  meat  kept 
madly  jumping  in  the  pot  for  an  hour  or  less,  fats 
almost  eliminated ;  such  cooking  cannot  give  from  the 
materials  employed  a  wholesome  dietary. 

But  in  the  infirmary,  as  in  the  three  other  county  in- 
stitutions, the  pivot  upon  which  turns  the  question  of 
sweet  or  tainted  meat,  as  well  as  the  care  and  nursing 
of  all  these  feeble  beings,  is  the  change  in  the  personnel 
of  the  county  board,  which  annually,  and  hereafter  bien- 
nially, means  a  change  in  practically  all  the  officers  of 
this  institution.  Is  it  strange  that  now  and  again  grave 
scandals  reach  even  the  deaf  ear  of  the  indifferent  pub- 
lic, when  we  realize  that  the  appointment  of  all  the  per- 
sons who  have  charge  of  this  community  is  made  and 
changed  solely  according  to  political  preference  ?  "  Not 
fi.tness,  but  '  pull,'  "  is  necessarily  their  motto.  It  is  this 
irresponsible  supervision  which  must  entail  the  greatest 
hardship  upon  this  feeble-minded  and  irresponsible  pop- 
ulation. 

The  insane  hospital  is  upon  the  same  grounds  as  the 


THE  COOK  couxry  cuaiuties.  151 

• 
intinnary,    about    a   thousand    feet   distant.      Here    are 

gathered  usually  about  eight  hundred  men  and  women, 
paupers,  incurably  insane.  Can  words  express  more  piti- 
able condition  ?  Certainly  there  are  no  creatures  in  a 
state  of  more  painful  helplessness.  Here,  as  in  the  in- 
tirmary,  all  appears  immaculately  clean,  and  fortunately 
so,  for  the  construction  of  the  wards  is  such  that  only 
their  perfect  cleanliness  makes  them  tolerable.  Many 
are  long,  dark  tunnels,  in  which  it  is  the  simple  truth  to 
say  that  sunshine  can  never  penetrate,  save  for  a  short 
distance  at  either  end.  The  plan  is  the  old  one  of  long 
interior  corridors,  from  which  open  the  sleeping-rooms 
on  either  side,  with  a  dining-room  also  off  the  corridor. 
These  rooms,  together  with  bath-room  and  clothes-room, 
constitute  the  usual  ward.  On  some  of  the  wards  the 
corridor  broadens  out  transversely  into  a  sitting-room, 
and  on  a  few  there  is  only  a  single  row  of  sleeping- 
rooms,  thus  giving  outside  windows  for  the  corridor ; 
but  the  usual  arrangement  is  the  dark,  narrow  inside 
corridor.  In  this  the  patients  must  spend  their  waking 
hours.  In  such  a  hospital,  there  are  a  large  proportion 
of  patients  sunk  in  various  stages  of  dementia,  who  are 
dead  to  any  save  the  most  primal  physical  sensations ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  unfortunately  a  propor- 
tion of  curable  patients  even  here,  and  there  are  chronic 
cases  not  demented.  For  the  year  1893,  there  are  re- 
ported seventy-two  recoveries,  which  is  in  itself  a  proof 
that  the  county  is  obliged  to  care  for  more  than  its  legal 
charge ;  i.e.,  the  incurable  insane. 

The  admissions  to  the  insane  asylum  for.  the  year 
1893  were  442,  of  Avhom  109  are  entered  as  born  in  the 
United   States ;    of  the   remaining  three-quarters,   Ger- 


152  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

many  is  charged  with  96  ;  Sweden  and  Xorway  with  45  ; 
Ireland,  74 ;  Poland,  13 ;  Bohemia,  8 ;  Russia,  5 ;  Austria, 
8 ;  unknown,  20  ;  while  the  others  are  contributed  from 
fifteen  different  countries.  Here,  as  in  the  infirmary  and 
other  institutions  where  birthplace  only  is  entered,  with- 
out lineage,  it  is  not  possible  to  state  from  the  records 
how  many  are  Jewish ;  but  it  is  certain  that  a  consider- 
able proportion  are,  probably,  for  instance,  all  of  those 
born  in  Russia.  Of  the  admissions  for  1893,  288  were 
men  and  154  were  women,  a  preponderance  of  men  far 
beyond  the  usual  proportion  in  insane  hospitals.  In  the 
State  hospitals,  in  1892,  out  of  a  total  population  of 
5,177,  there  were  only  one-tenth  more  men  than  women. 
Two  physicians,  a  man  and  a  woman,  have  charge  of 
the  medical  side  of  the  asylum.  In  addition  to  the 
main  building,  there  are  already  four  cottages,  two  for 
men  and  two  for  women,  receiving  about  fifty  patients 
each.  ■  Two  of  these  are  used  as  infirmary  wards,  and 
the  others  for  quiet  inmates.  The  "Wines  cottage  has 
the  lightest  and  most  spacious  sitting-room,  and  the 
darkest  and  most  unattractive  cellar  dining-room  im- 
aginable. This  is  an  illustration  of  the  irregularity 
with  which  work  is  done  for  public  purposes ;  for  there 
is  a  still  unexecuted  conception  of  a  great  general  din- 
ing-room, lacking  which,  this  honest  cellar  is  made  to  do 
duty.  The  ward  dining-rooms  have  many  disadvantages, 
and  a  general  dining-hall  would  be  a  most  wholesome 
improvement.  It  is  intended  that  the  food  of  the  as}-- 
lum  shall  be  somewhat  more  liberal  than  that  of  the 
infirmary ;  but  here,  as  there,  the  cooking  methods  are 
absolutely  unscientific.  The  chief  additional  items  are, 
that  butter  is  allowed  for  all  meals,  and  that  pudding  is 


THE  COOK  VOryTY  CllAinTlES.  153 

given  for  dinner.  There  is  mush  for  breakfast ;  for 
dinner,  beef  and  potato  and  another  vegetable  —  often 
cabbage  ;  for  supper,  stewed  apples  or  rice  ;  with  coffee 
or  tea  for  breakfast  and  dinner,  and  tea  for  supper,  and 
bread  and  biitter  for  all  meals.  Unfortunately,  this 
sounds  better  than  it  is  in  fact.  Few  i^ersons  could  see 
the  food  as  prepared  and  served  (excepting  the  bread) 
without  a  sense  of  ])hysical  revolt. 

The  attendants  are  too  few  in  number  to  give  the  pa- 
tients proper  out-door  exercise,  which  they  especially 
need,  because  of  the  darkness  of  the  Avards  and  the  fact 
that  they  are  seriously  overcrowded  according  to  mod- 
ern hospital  standards.  There  is  no  system  of  employ- 
ment here  for  the  patients,  save  some  work  in  keeping 
the  wards  in  order  and  about  the  house.  The  monotony 
and  idleness,  the  unutterable  dreariness,  dull  the  facul- 
ties of  those  not  already  beyond  change. 

But  if,  the  constant  succession  of  new  attendants  is 
prejudicial  to  the  proper  work  of  the  infirmary,  what 
must  it  be  here,  where  insane  people  are  to  be  cared 
for  ?  A  man  or  a  woman  overcome  with  an  infirmity, 
which  the  laws  of  Illinois  at  last  recognize  as  a  dis- 
ease, is  placed  in  constant  care"  night  and  day  of  — 
nurses  trained  for  such  care  ?  Xot  at  all.  But  of  some 
one  who  has  a  "pull."  I  chanced  to  be  standing  in  the 
asylum  corridor  one  day  just  after  there  had  been  a 
revolution  of  the  county  wheel,  when  a  stout,  aggressive 
and  excited  Irish  woman,  evidently  an  attendant,  bore 
down  upon  one  of  the  commissioners  present,  who  was 
also  of  foreign  birth,  and  said,  "  Mr.  Blank,  I  want  to 
see  you."  To  which  he  replied  with  a  helpless  gesture, 
*'  Well,  I  hope  you  don't  want  anything,  because  I  haven't 


154  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

got  anything  left."  — "  Aw,  don't  tell  that  to  me,  Mr. 
Blank !  Do  you  know  I  live  only  two  blocks  from  your 
house,  and  we've  got  nine  men  in  our  house  that  worked 
mighty  hard  for  you?"  —  "Well,  I  can't  help  it ;  I 
haven't  got  anything  left.  Can't  you  see  I  am  busy 
talking  now  ?  "  To  which  the  attendant  replied  more 
imperatively  than  ever,  "  Well,  I  want  to  see  you  ;  I 
want  to  see  you  alone.  Where  is  Mr.  So-and-So  ? " 
with  which  she  flounced  on,  to  return  later.  The  re- 
markable thing  with  our  present  system  of  appoint- 
ments is,  not  that  abuses  occur,  but  that  more  do  not 
occur.  It  gives  one,  after  all,  a  new  confidence  in  hu- 
man nature,  that  the  demands  of  helplessness  and  in- 
sanity develop  in  unpromising  material  such  excellent 
qualities  of  patience  and  self-control  as  are  sometimes 
shown. 

Down  in  the  city  of  Chicago  the  county  carries  on  its 
remaining  charitable  undertakings.  Out  on  Harrison 
Street,  a  little  over  two  miles  from  the  lake,  stands  the 
Cook  County  Hospital,  to  which  were  admitted  in  the 
year  1893  more  than  eleven  thousand  cases,  while  more 
than  two  thousand  were  dressed  and  sent  home.  It  is 
due  to  the  substitution  of  trained  nurses  for  the  former 
political-appointee  attendants,  that  this  hospital  now 
stands  in  the  front  rank  of  American  public  hospitals, 
so  far  as  the  nursing  care  of  the  wards  is  concerned. 
Its  benefits  are  given  free  of  charge.  The  position  of 
an  interne  in  this  hospital  is  only  obtained  after  com- 
petitive examination,  and  it  is  much  coveted.  One 
reason  why  it  is  coveted  may  be  found  in  the  statement 
of  an  interne,  whose  naivete  can  no  more  be  ques- 
tioned   than    his    truthfulness.      "  I  like    my    position. 


Till-:  COOK   COlJyTY   fllAniTlKS.  loo 

In  fact,  I  much  prefer  it  to  a  similar  iilace  in  a  New 
York  hospital.  There  about  all  an  interne  can  do  is  to 
follow  after  the  outside  doctors  on  tlieir  rounds,  and 
watch  them,  and  hear  what  they  sa}',  and  see  their  pre- 
scriptions. TUit  here  the  outside  doctors  do  not  visit 
regularly,  and  do  not  interfere  with  the  interne's  treat- 
ment." There  may  be  carjjcrs  who  would  pick  a  flaw 
in  the  county's  method  of  educating  doctors  by  self-in- 
struction;  but  it  would  seem  that  no  paternalist  could 
question  its  care  —  for  the  medical  profession.  Yet 
just  at  this  point  the  paternalist  and  the  man  of  medical 
science  do  agree  in  questioning  this  care,  and  that  on 
the  ground  of  the  best  service  for  the  hospital  wards. 
They  say  that  the  attending  physicians,  who  are  now 
forbidden  to  l)ring  students  upon  the  wards,  should  be 
allowed  to  do  so,  on  the  same  principle  that  the  surgeons 
bring  the  students  into  the  amphitheatre  ;  that  if  the 
physician  had  this  i)rivilege,  they  would  give  the  wards 
all  due  attention,  and  the  education  of  the  interne  and 
the  student  would  be  better  in  proportion  to  the  skill 
the  attending  physician  could  offer  the  patient.  Neither 
the  physicians  nor  the  surgeons  of  the  Cook  County 
Hospital  staff  are  salaried  ;  and  the  appointments  are 
valued  for  prestige,  and  for  clinical  advantages.  As 
the  physician  and  surgeon  gain  prestige  through  the 
reputations  of  their  clinics,  and  as  the  forbidding  of 
students  upon  the  wards  practically  forbids  the  physi- 
cian having  an}^  clinical  advantages  from  the  hospital,  it 
is  easy  to  understand  why  the  salaried  internes  have 
full  sway.  Moreover,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
practitioner  feels'  himself  spurred  to  his  best  efforts  by 
the  presence  of  students,  the  most  mercilessly  critical 


156  HULL-HOUSE  31  APS  AND   PAP  BUS. 

beings  in  existence;  and  thus  incidentally  the  patient 
might  be  bejieiited.  We  are  told  that  the  opening  of 
the  wards  of  the  free  hospital  of  New  Orleans  to  stu- 
dents resulted  in  a  diminished  death-rate.  The  great 
foreign  free  hospitals  are  open,  and  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  any  sound  reason  for  the  closing  of  Cook  County. 

Here,  again,  the  food  problem  is  unsolved,  save  that 
here,  again,  the  bread  is  of  the  average  baker's  quality. 
The  Avard  cooking,  done  by  convalescents,  cannot  be  sat- 
isfactory. The  old  kitchen  is  unwholesome  in  odor  and 
appearance,  and  the  whole  culinary  department  shows 
an  inattention  to  scientific  methods  more  painful  in  a 
hospital  than  anywhere  else.  The  constant  change  in 
the  business  management  entailed  by  the  constant  suc- 
cession of  administrative  officers  of  course  makes  it 
expensive  and  really  impossible  to  carry  on  the  business 
side  of  this  hospital  in  the  best  manner. 

Unfortunately  the  hospital  is  obliged  to  discharge 
many  patients  before  they  are  strong  enough  to  work, 
and  oftentimes  patients  who  are  without  money  or  home. 
The  only  place  where  a  person  without  money  or  a  home 
can  go  is  Dunning;  and  self-respecting  people  decline 
that,  and  stagger  along,  beginning  work  too  soon.  This 
is,  in  the  long  run,  financially  expensive  to  the  county, 
as  it  destroys  or  impairs  the  power  of  the  individual  to 
supjjort  himself.  A  proper  convalescents'  home  would 
lengthen  the  working-life  of  many  a  man  and  woman,  to 
say  nothing  of  its  increasing  their  comfort.  And  an 
establishment  of  this  sort  in  country  surroundings  would 
be  justified  by  the  success  of  the  Boston  Convalescents' 
Home.  • 

The  detention  hospital  stands  upon  the  same  plat  of 


THE   COOK  COUNTY  CHAUITIES.  157 

ground  with  the  hospital.  Here  the  insane  are  brought 
and  confined  for  periods  of  from  tAventy-four  liours  to 
eight  days  (in  exceptional  cases  even  two  or  three  weeks), 
pending  the  weekly  hearing  of  insane  cases.  The  court 
sits  in  this  building,  so  that  no  exposure  is  necessary  in 
carrying  patients  to  and  from  a  down-town  courtroom. 
This  building,  too,  is  immaculately  clean.  Indeed,  it 
sometimes  seems  as  though  this  were  the  age  of  institu- 
tional tidiness ;  and  that  in  itself  is  a  cheering  sign  of 
advancing  care,  though  the  polished  outside  of  cup  and 
platter  may  be  delusive. 

Through  this  detention  hospital  must  pass  in  turn  the 
insane  persons  of  Cook  County ;  and  she  now  contributes 
more  than  twenty-five  hundred  to  the  insane  population 
of  the  State.  When  this  hospital  was  built,  it  was 
fondly  hoped  that  many  hysterical  and  recent  cases 
might  be  cured  by  a  few  days  or  weeks  of  its  tender 
care;  but  the  facts,  as  shown  by  the  investigation  of  the 
Avinter  of  1894,  prove  how  far  from  curative  the  institu- 
tion is,  and  must  be  so  long  as  it  is  managed  upon  its 
present  basis.  The  attendants  are  political  appointees. 
It  is  useless  to  enter  into  brutal  particulars  ;  it  is  enough 
to  say  that  they  are  and  must  be  ill-fitted  for  the  care  of 
insane  patients  who  are  received  here  at  the  most  critical 
and  violent  periods  of  their  malady.  The  detention  hos- 
pital should  be  treated  as  a  ward  of  the  Cook  County 
hospital,  and  trained  nurses  with  specific  teaching  in  the 
care  of  the  insane  placed  in  charge. 

There  is  at  present  no  training-school  for  nurses  for 
the  insane  in  this  State ;  aiul  if  one  could  be  thus 
established,  which  should  have  in  charge  the  detention 
hospital,  it  would  be  a  starting-point  for  better  work 


158  JIULL-UOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPEBS. 

eveiywhere.  In  connection  with  the  training-school  for 
nurses,  "which  has  in  charge  most  of  the  wards  of  the 
Cook  County  hospital,  this  is  an  entirely  feasible  plan. 
In  fact,  it  only  requires  the  taking  of  twelve  appoint- 
ments out  of  politics,  and  some  changes  in  the  medical 
attendance,  not  requiring  more  money,  to  make  this 
hospital  as  nearly  a  model  as  its  cramped  quarters  will 
allow. 

The  most  spectacular  proof  of  the  poverty  entailed 
upon  Chicago  by  the  general  business  depression  of 
1893,  and  locally  by  the  inevitable  human  debris  left  by 
the  World's  Fair,  could  be  daily  seen  during  all  the  se- 
verer months  of  the  winter  of  1893  and  1894.  It  was 
a  solid,  pressing  crowd  of  hundreds  of  shabby  men  and 
shawled  or  hooded  women,  coming  from  all  parts  of  a 
great  city  whose  area  is  over  one  hundred  and  eighty-six 
square  miles,  standing  hour  after  hour  with  market- 
baskets  high  above  their  heads,  held  in  check  by  police- 
men, polyglot,  but  having  the  common  language  of  their 
persistency,  their  weariness,  their  chill  and  hunger. 
This  crowd  stood  daily,  unsheltered  from  the  weather, 
before  130  South  Clinton  Street.  Now  and  again  a 
woman  was  crushed,  —  in  one  instance  it  is  reported  was 
killed,  and  the  ambulance,  was  called  to  take  her  away. 
Once  a  case  of  smallpox  was  discovered,  and  a  sign 
hung  out,  and  the  office  closed  for  a  day  or  two ;  but 
this  did  not  frighten  away  the  crowd  outside.  It  only 
served  to  give  the  clerks  inside  a  little  chance  to  get 
their  work  up.  When  once  the  applicant  penetrates  the 
office,  he  is  in  the  great  dingy  waiting-room  of  the  Cook 
County  Agency,  from  whence  is  dispensed  out-door  relief. 
He  furnishes  his  name  and  address,  and  is  called  upon 


THE  COOK  COUNTY  CIIAIilTIfJS.  159 

later  by  a  paid  visitor,  upon  whose  report  the  fuel  and 
ration  are  allowed  or  refused.  Or,  if  the  api)lication 
has  been  granted,  the  market  basket  discloses  its  ntisofi 
d'etre,  and  the  allowance  of  food  and  one  bar  of  hard 
soap  is  carried  hence,  the  coal  being  sent  later  from  the 
contractor. 

It  is  hard  to  go  to  tlio  infirmary,  hard  to  get  relief 
from  the  county  ;  but  it  is  esteemed  hardest  of  all  to  be 
buried  by  the  county.  The  abhorrence  of  a  pauper  burial 
cannot  1)6  better  indicated  than  by  the  fact  that  of  the 
607  inmates  who  died  at  Dunning  in  1893,  the  funerals 
of  251  were  provided  by  friends.  Indeed,  the  one  gen- 
eral effort  at  saving  in  this  district  is  that  sorry  spec- 
ulation in  futures  called  burial-insurance.  Of  course 
there  are  numberless  lapses  of  the  policies,  which  nuike 
the  business  profitable.  The  dread  of  pauper  burial 
is  twofold.  First,  the  lack  of  religious  ceremony,  and, 
secondly,  the  loss  of  a  great  social  function,  far  exceed- 
ing in  magnificence  a  wedding  or  a  christening.  The 
necessary  cost  of  sickness  and  death  is  vastly  in- 
creased by  absolutely  unnecessary  items  on  the  un- 
dertakers bill.  It  is  the  hope  of  this  anticipated 
pageantry  which  makes  the  burial-insurance  collector 
a  constant  figure,  threading  in  and  out  among  the  tene- 
ments, and  collecting  his  weekly  premiums.  "  And  to 
think,"  exclaimed  a  mother,  in  a  spasm  of  baffled  pru- 
dence and  grief,  "  that  this  child  I've  lost  was  the  only 
one  that  wasn't  insured  I  " 

There  is  a  constant  criticism  of  the  county  relief  office 
from  the  recipient's  point  of  view.  He  says  the  coal  is 
delivered  slowly  and  in  scant  measure,  that  favoritism 
is  shown  by  visitors,  that  burials  are  tardy  and  cruel ; 


160  UULL-nOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

and  the  facts  justify  liim.  But  any  one  acquainted  with 
the  daily  work  of  this  office  must  feel  that  the  wonder  is 
that  the  $100,000  allotted  for  its  work  is  really  as  fairly 
divided  as  we  find  it.  The  methods  of  this  office,  with 
its  records  kept  as  each  changing  administration  chooses, 
its  doles  subject  to  every  sort  of  small  political  influence, 
and  its  failure  to  co-operate  with  private  charities,  are  not 
such  as  science  can  approve. 

These  institutions  cost  the  county  for  running  ex- 
penses alone,  nearly  $700,000  annually,  providing  sal- 
aried positions  for  five  hundred  persons  or  more,  and 
of  course  do  in  some  degree  meet  the  necessities  of 
a  great  dependent  population  which  is  at  present  an 
unavoidable  factor  in  our  social  problem.  Yet  such  a 
state  of  irresponsibility  as  investigation  now  and  again 
discloses  must  discourage  us.  AVe  are  impressed  with 
the  lack  of  system  and  classification  among  the  benefi- 
ciaries of  the  infirmary  and  the  county  agency  for  out- 
door relief.  We  are  shocked  by  the  crudeness  of  the 
management  which  huddles  men,  women,  and  children, 
the  victims  of  misfortune  and  the  relics  of  dissipation, 
the  idle,  the  ineffective  criminal,  the  penniless  convales- 
cent, under  one  roof  and  one  discipline.  On  purely 
economic  grounds  we  need  a  children's  home,  or  some 
provision  so  that  no  child  shall  be  in  a  poorhouse.  AVe 
need  a  home  for  convalescents.  Both  humanity  and 
economy  demand  that  there  be  workshops  provided  at 
Dunning  for  the  sane  and  the  insane  paupers.  Then 
there  is  that  small  remnant  of  blameless  poor  for  whom 
we  can  surely  make  more  dignified  provision  without 
pauperizing  society.  It  is  painful  enough  to  see  "  de- 
sert a  beggar,"  without  seeing  her  thrust  in  to  die  dis- 


THE  COOK  COUNTY  CHARITIES.  161 

graced  by  the  association  of  a  public  poorliouse.  Yet 
these  measures,  unfortunately,  will  be  considered  prima- 
rily only  as  furnishing  certain  "  places  "  to  be  filled  by 
political  preferment.  The  comfort,  the  recovery,  the 
lives,  of  all  these  thousands  of  dependent  people,  hang 
upon  the  knowledge,  the  kindliness,  the  honesty,  and 
good  faith  of  those  hired  to  care  for  them.  How 
are  these  people  hired,  —  in  the  open  labor  market, 
for  fitness,  by  examination  ?  Not  even  an  Altrurian 
would  waste  words  on  such  a  question.  These  places 
are  scheduled,  with  the  salaries  attached,  and  each 
commissioner  disposes  of  his  share  of  the  patronage. 
Commissioners  are  not  responsible  for  this  method ;  it 
is  not  unlawful,  and  it  is  convenient  for  them.  They 
act  from  the  pressure  of  public  opinion  translatable  into 
votes,  and  modify  their  actions  according  to  the  strength 
of  such  pressure.  How  many  persons  in  the  city  of 
Chicago  whose  incomes  make  them  safe  from  the  possi- 
bility of  a  personal  interest  in  these  places  ever  visit 
them,  or  perhaps  know  where  they  are  ?  More,  how  many 
of  them  realize  that  their  visits,  their  intelligent  interest, 
are  all  that  is  necessary  to  make  these  institutions  give 
really  good  servicfe  ?  There  is  no  mal-administration  so 
strong  that  it  can  persist  in  the  face  of  public  knowledge 
and  attention.  The  public  now  has  and  will  have  ex- 
actly such  institutions  as  it  demands,  managed  exactly 
as  its  discrimination  requires.  It  is  as  tiresome  as  that 
Carthage  must  be  destroyed,  but  it  is  as  true,  that  the 
charities  of  Cook  County  will  never  properly  perform 
their  duties  until  politics  are  divorced  from  them. 


IX. 

ART  AND  LABOR. 


ART  AND   LABOR. 
BY    ELLKN    GATKS    STARR. 

To  any  one  living  in  a  working-class  district  of  a 
great  city  to-day,  the  question  must  arise  whether  it  be 
at  all  worth  the  cost  to  try  to  perpetuate  art  under  con- 
ditions so  hopeless,  or  whether  it  be  not  the  only  ra- 
tional or  even  possible  course  to  give  up  the  struggle 
from  that  point,  and  devote  every  energy  to  "  the  purifi- 
cation of  the  nation's  heart  and  the  chastisement  of  its 
life."  Only  by  re-creation  of  the  source  of  art  can  it  be 
restored  as  a  living  force.  But  one  must  always  re- 
member the  hungering  individual  soul  which,  •  without 
it,  will  have  passed  unsolaced  and  unfed,  followed  by 
other  souls  who  lack  the  impulse  his  shoiild  have  given. 
And  Avhen  one  sees  how  almost  miraculously  the  young 
mind  often  responds  to  what  is  beautiful  in  its  environ- 
ment, and  rejects  what  is  ugly,  it  renews  courage  to  set 
the  leaven  of  the  beautiful  in  the  midst  of  the  ngly, 
instead  of  waiting  for  the  ugly  to  be  first  cleared 
away. 

A  child  of  two  drunken  parents  one  day  brought  to 
Hull-House  kindergarten  and  presented  to  her  teacher  a 
wretched  print,  with  the  explanation,  ''  See  the  Lady 
Moon."  The  Lady  ]\Ioon,  so  named  in  one  of  the  songs 
the  children  sing,  was  dimly  visible  in  an  extreme  corner 
of  the  print  otherwise  devoted  to  murder  and  sudden 
death ;  but  it  was  the  only  thing  the  child  really  saw. 

The  nourishment  to  life  of  one  good  picture  to  sup- 
165 


166  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

plant  in  interest  vicious  story-papers  and  posters  ;  of  one 
good  song  to  take  the  place  of  vulgar  street  jingles,  can- 
not, I  believe,  be  estimated  or  guessed.  A  good  picture 
for  every  household  seems  unattainable  until  households 
can  produce,  or  at  least  select,  their  own  ;  but  certainly  a 
good  one  in  every  schoolroom  would  not  be  unattainable, 
if  the  public  should  come  to  regard  it  as  a  matter  of 
moment  that  the  rooms  in  which  the  children  of  the  land 
spend  their  most  impressionable  days  be  made  beautiful 
and  suggestive,  instead  of  barren  and  repellant. 

Mr.  T.  C.  Horsfall,  of  Manchester,  England,  who  has 
developed  a  system  of  circulating  collections  of  pictures 
in  the  schools  ^  of  that  unhappy  city,  says  that  the  de- 
cision as  to  whether  art  shall  be  used  in  education  is, 
to  modern  communities,  a  decision  as  to  whether  the 
mass  of  the  people  shall  be  barbarian  or  civilized.  As- 
suredly it  has  a  direct  bearing  upon  the  art-producing 
possibilities  of  the  communities  in  question. 

Let  us  consider  what  is  the  prospect  for  an  ''  art  of 
the  people  "  in  our  great  cities.  And  first  let  us  admit 
that  art  must  be  of  the  people  if  it  is  to  be  at  all.  AYe 
must  admit  this  whether  we  look  into  the  life  of  the 
past  or  into  our  own  life.  If  we  look  to  any  great  na- 
tional art,  that  of  Athens  or  of  Venice  or  of  Florence, 
we  see  that  it  has  not  been  produced  by  a  few,  living 
apart,  fed  upon  conditions  different  from  the  common 
life ;  but  that  it  has  been,  in  great  part,  the  expression 
of  that   common  life.     If   it  has  reached   higher  than 


1  The  principles  and  plan  of  INTr.  Horsfall's  beneficent  vrork  may 
be  found  in  his  papers  entitled,  "  Tlio  Use  of  Pictures  in  Schools," 
'-Art  in  Large  Towns,"  and  "The  AYork  of  the  Manchester  Art 
Museum."     J.  E.  Cornish,  St.  Ann's  Square,  Manchester. 


ART  AND   LABOR.  167 

the  common  life,  it  lias  done  so  only  by  rising  through 
it,  never  by  springing  up  outside  it  and  apart  from 
it.  When  Florence  decked  herself  with  reliefs  of  the 
Madonna  and  the  Infant,  the  life  of  Florence  was  a 
devotion  to  these  shrines.  Giotto  and  Donatello  only 
expressed  with  a  power  and  grace  concentred  in  them 
what  all  the  people  felt ;  and  more  than  that,  had  not 
the  people  felt  thus,  there  could  have  been  no  medium 
for  that  grace  and  power. 

If  we  are  to  have  a  national  art  at  all,  it  must  be  art 
of  the  people ;  and  art  can  only  come  to  a  free  people. 
The  great  prophet  of  art  in  oiir  day,  John  Ruskin,  has 
said  that  "  all  great  art  is  praise,"  showing  man's  pleas- 
ure in  God's  work ;  and  his  disciple,  William  Morris, 
expresses  another  side  of  the  same  truth  when  he  says 
that  "  to  each  man  is  due  the  solace  of  art  in  his  labor, 
and  the  opportunity  of  expressing  his  thoughts  to  his 
fellows  through  that  labor."  Now,  only  a  free  man  can 
express  himself  in  his  work.  If  he  is  doing  slave's 
work,  under  slavish  conditions,  it  is  doubtful  whether  he 
will  ultimately  have  many  thoughts  worth  the  name ; 
and  if  he  have,  his  work  can  in  no  wise  be  their  vehicle. 
It  is  only  when  a  man  is  doing  work  which  he  wishes 
done,  and  delights  in  doing,  and  Avhich  he  is  free  to  do 
as  he  likes,  that  his  work  becomes  a  language  to  him. 
As  soon  as  it  does  so  become  it  is  artistic.  Every  man 
working  in  the  joy  of  his  heart  is,  in  some  measure,  an 
artist.  Everything  wrought  with  delight  in  the  work 
itself  is,  in  some  measure,  lovely.  The  destructive 
force  of  the  ugly  is  its  heartlossness.  The  peasant's 
cottage  in  the  Tyrol,  built  with  its  owner's  hands, 
decorated  with  his  taste,  and  propounding  his  morals 


168  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

and  religion  in  inlaid  sentences  under  its  broad  eaves, 
blesses  the  memory  with  a  beauty  but  half  obliterated 
by  daily  sight  of  dreary  parallelograms  and  triangles, 
joylessly  united,  which  make  up  the  streets  of  our  work- 
ing-people. The  streets  of  Venice,  of  Verona,  of  Rouen, 
were  built  by  men  working  in  freedom,  at  liberty  to 
vary  a  device  or  to  invent  one.  They  were  not  built  by 
lawlessness  or  caprice,  but  under  a  willing  service,  which 
alone  is  perfect  freedom. 

The  same  men  who  built  so  nobly  the  cathedrals  and 
council-halls  of  Eouen  and  Venice,  built  as  harmoni- 
ously, though  more  simply  and  modestly,  as  was  fit, 
their  own  dwellings.  Had  they  been  capable  of  making 
their  own  houses  ugly,  they  would  have  been  incapa- 
ble of  housing  beautifully  the  rulers  of  their  city  or  the 
King  of  kings. 

This  is  the  fatal  mistake  of  our  modern  civilization, 
which  is  causing  it  to  undo  itself  and  become  barbarous 
in  its  unloveliness  and  discord.  AVe  have  believed  that 
we  could  force  men  to  live  without  beauty  in  their  own 
lives,  and  still  compel  them  to  make  for  us  the  beauti- 
ful things  in  which  we  have  denied  them  any  part.  We 
have  supposed  that  we  could  teach  men,  in  schools,  to 
produce  a  grace  and  harmony  which  they  never  see,  and 
which  the  life  that  we  force  them  to  live  utterly  pre- 
cludes. Or  else  we  have  thought  —  a  still  more  hope- 
less error  —  that  they,  the  workers,  the  makers,  need 
not  know  what  grace  and  beauty  and  harmony  are ;  that 
artists  and  architects  may  keep  the  secrets,  and  the 
builders  and  makers,  not  knowing  them,  can  slavishly 
and  mechanically  execute  what  the  wise  in  these  mys- 
teries plan. 


ART  Ayi)    LABOR.  169 

The  results  slioukl  long  ago  luive  taught  us  our  mis- 
take. l>ut  only  now  are  we  learning,  partly  from  dis- 
mal experience  of  life  barren  of  beauty  and  variety, 
and  partly  from  severe  but  timely  teaching  from  such 
prophets  as  Ruskin  and  IMorris,  that  no  man  can  execute 
artistically  what  another  man  plans,  unless  the  work- 
man's freedom  has  been  part  of  the  plan.  The  prodiict 
of  a  machine  may  be  useful,  and  may  serve  some  pur- 
jjoses  of  information,  but  can  never  be  artistic.  As  soon 
as  a  machine  intervenes  between  the  mind  and  its  pro- 
duct, a  hard,  impassable  barrier  —  a  non-conductor  of 
thought  and  emotion  —  is  raised  between  the  speaking 
and  the  listening  mind.  If  a  man  is  made  a  machine, 
if  his  part  is  merely  that  of  reproducing,  with  mechani- 
cal exactness,  the  design  of  somebody  else,  the  effect  is 
the  same.  The  more  exact  the  reproduction,  the  less  of 
the  personality  of  the  man  who  does  the  work  is  in  the 
product,  the  more  uninteresting  will  the  product  be. 
A  demonstration  of  how  uninteresting  this  slavish  ma- 
chine-work can  become  may  be  found  in  the  carved  and 
upholstered  ornamentation  of  any  drawing-room  car  — 
one  might  also  say  of  any  drawing-room  one  enters. 

I  have  never  seen  in  a  city  anything  in  the  way  of 
decoration  upon  the  house  of  an  American  citizen  Avhich 
he  had  himself  designed  and  wrought  for  pleasure  in  it. 
In  the  house  of  an  Italian  peasant  immigrant  in  our 
own  neighborhood,  I  have  seen  wall  and  ceiling  decora- 
tions of  his  own  design,  and  done  by  his  own  hand  in 
colors.  The  designs  were  very  rude,  the  colors  coarse ; 
but  there  was  nothing  of  the  \'ulgar  in  it,  and  there  was 
something  of  hope.  The  peasant  immigrant's  surround- 
ings begin  to  be  vulgar  precisely  at  the  point  where  he 


170  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AXD   PAPEIIS. 

begins  to  buy  and  adorn  his  dwelling  with  the  products 
of  American  manufacture.  What  he  brings  with  him 
in  the  way  of  carven  bed,  wrought  kerchief,  enamel  in- 
laid picture  of  saint  or  angel,  has  its  charm  of  human 
touch,  and  is  graceful,  however  childish. 

The  peasants  themselves  secretly  prefer  their  old  pos- 
sessions, but  are  sustained  by  a  proud  and  virtuous  con- 
sciousness of  having  secured  what  other  people  have 
and  what  the  world  approves.  A  dear  old  peasant 
friend  of  Hull  House  once  conceived  the  notion  that 
the  dignity  of  his  wife  —  whom  he  called  "  my  lady  "  — 
required  that  she  have  a  dress  in  the  American  mode. 
Many  were  the  mediatorial  struggles  which  we  enacted 
before  this  "American  dress"  was  fitted  and  done. 
And  then,  by  the  mercy  of  Heaven,  her  courage  gave  out, 
and  she  never  wore  it.  She  found  it  too  uncomfortable, 
and  I  know  that  in  her  inmost  heart  she  found  it  too 

ugly. 

Could  men  build  their  own  houses,  could  they  carve 
or  fresco  upon  casing,  door,  or  ceiling  any  decoration 
which  pleased  them,  it  is  inconceivable  that,  under  con- 
ditions of  freedom  and  happiness,  they  should  refrain 
from  doing  so.  It  is  inconceivable  that,  adorning  their 
own  dwellings  in  the  gladness  of  their  hearts,  they 
should  not  develop  something  of  grace,  of  beauty,  of 
meaning,  in  what  their  hands  wrought ;  impossible  that 
their  hands  should  work  on  unprompted  by  heart  or 
brain ;  impossible  then,  as  inevitable  now,  that  most 
men's  houses  should  express  nothing  of  themselves  save 
a  dull  acceptance  of  things  commercially  and  industrially 
thrust  upon  them. 

A  workingman  must  accept  his  house  as  he  finds  it. 


AUr  AM)   LABOR.  171 

He  not  only  cannot  bviild  it,  he  cannot  bny  it,  and  is 
usually  not  at  liberty  to  alter  it  materially,  even  had  he 
the  motive  to  do  so,  being  likely  to  leave  it  at  any  time. 
The  frescoed  ceiling  to  which  I  have  referred,  as  the 
only  example  within  my  experience  of  any  attempt  at 
original  decoration,  was  in  a  cottage  tenement.  If  the 
author  had  any  aifection  for  the  work  of  his  hands,  he 
could  not  take  it  away  with  him.  He  would  probaljly 
not  be  permitted,  Avere  he  inclined,  to  carve  the  door- 
posts ;  and  the  uncertainty  of  tenure  Avould  deter  him 
from  yielding  to  any  artistic  prompting  to  do  so.  It 
would  be  disheartening  to  find  one's  belongings  set  into 
the  street,  and  be  obliged  to  leave  one's  brave  device 
half  finished. 

A  man's  happiness,  as  Avell  as  his  freedom,  is  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  his  being  artistic.  Euskin  lays  it 
down  as  a  laAv  that  neither  vice  nor  pain  can  enter  into 
the  entirely  highest  art.  How  far  art  can  be  at  all  co- 
existent with  pain,  ugliness,  gloom,  sorrow,  slavery,  con- 
cerns very  vitally  the  question  of  an  art  of  the  people. 

No  civilized  and  happy  people  has  ever  been  able  to 
express  itself  without  art.  The  prophet  expands  his 
<•  All  great  art  is  praise  "  into  "  The  art  of  man  is  the 
expression  of  his  rational  and  disciplined  delight  in  tlie 
forms  and  laws  of  the  creation  of  which  he  forms  a 
part."  A  rational  and  disciplined  delight  in  the  forms 
and  laAvs  of  the  creation  of  which  a  denizen  of  an  indus- 
trial district  in  one  of  our  great  cities  forms  a  conscious 
part,  is  inconceivable.  Some  of  the  laws  which  govern 
its  conscious  life  may  be  traced  in  their  resultant  forms. 

Its  most  clearly  manifested  law  is  "the  iron  law  of 
wages."     Of  the  workings  and  products  of  this  law  in 


172  BULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

squalor,  deformity,  and  irrecoverable  loss  of  health, 
many  examples  are  given  in  the  accompanying  article 
on  Child-labor. 

Of  the  law  of  love  manifested  in  the  harmonious  life 
of  the  universe,  these  little  toilers  know  nothing.  Of 
the  laws  of  healthy  growth  of  mind  and  body  by  air, 
sunlight,  and  wholesome  work,  neither  they  nor  their 
children  can  knoAV  anything.  Of  the  laws  of  heredity 
they  know  bitterly,  and  of  the  law  of  arrested  develop- 
ment. 

It  is  needlessly  painful  to  say  here  in  what  forms 
these  laws  have  made  themselves  known  to  them,  and 
to  all  who  look  upon  them.  It  is  equally  needless  to 
say  that  they  can  have  no  delight  in  these  forms,  no 
wish  to  reflect  and  perpetuate  them.  Need  it  be  said 
that  they  can  have  no  art  ? 

The  Greek  was  compelled  by  his  joy  in  his  own  and 
his  brother's  beauty  and  strength  to  make  it  abiding, 
and  a  joy  to  all  who  should  look  upon  it.  It  was  a 
not  unreasonable  pride  which  offered  to  the  gods  as  a  re- 
ligious act  the  feats  of  those  strong  and  perfect  bodies ; 
and  Greek  sculpture  smiles  forth  the  gladness  of  the 
Greek  heart  blithely  in  its  graceful  runners  and  wrest- 
lers, solemnl}^  in  its  august  deities,  whose  laws  the  peo- 
ple obeyed,  and  rejoiced  in  obeying.  It  may  not  be 
quite  profitless,  though  altogether  painful,  to  think 
sometimes  of  the  weak,  small,  ugly  frames  produced 
by  the  life  we  force  men  and  little  children  to  live,  and 
of  which  we  would  not  dare  make  an  offering  to  an 
offended  God,  whose  laws  we  have  neither  rejoiced  in 
nor  obeyed. 

Obedience  to  physical  law  results  always  in  forms  of 


ART  AND   LABOR.  173 

physical  beauty ;  love  of  these  forms  and  happy  activ- 
ity, in  artistic  expression.  From  disobedience  to  law 
follows  physical  ugliness,  which  inspires  notliing  but 
apathy  or  distaste,  and  results  in  no  artistic  utterance. 
A  higher  art  is  born  of  delight  in  spiritual  beauty,  con- 
sequent upon  obedience  to  law  above  the  physical.  It 
remains  to  determine  how  far  the  disharmony  of  dis- 
obedience can  have  expression  through  art.  Discord  has 
place  in  music  only  as  a  negative,  to  give  accent  to  the 
positive  good.  Variety  is  good,  but  the  eye  and  ear 
crave  occasional  monotony  in  art-form  to  make  the  good 
of  multiform  life  keenly  felt.  Beyond  that  need  monot- 
ony and  discord  are  both  painful.  This  is  the  limit  of 
the  purely  artistic  use  of  these  negative  values. 

The  expression  of  the  negative  in  art-form  has,  how- 
ever, within  limits,  another  legitimate  use,  which  bears 
the  same  relation  to  art  in  its  strict  sense  which  pam- 
phleteering bears  to  literature  proper. 

Against  the  infliction  or  willing  permission  of  pain, 
there  is  a  gospel  to  be  preached ;  and  for  the  effectual 
preaching  of  this  gospel,  literature,  art,  every  language 
in  whicli  it  can  be  couched,  may  be  j)ressed  into  service. 

"  We're  made  so  tliat  we  love 
First  when  we  see  tlieiu  painted,  things  we've  passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  eared  to  see; 
And  so  tliey  are  better,  i)ainted,  —  better  to  us, 
Which  is  tlie  same  thing.     Art  was  given  for  tliat." 

So  it  was,  —  to  make  us  love  the  lovabh\  Fmt  if  we 
are  made  so,  too,  that  we  hate  for  the  lirst  time  as  it 
deserves  to  be  hated,  and  dread  as  we  ought  to  dread  it 
when  we  see  it  painted,  the  destruction  of  the  lovable 


174  nULL-IIOUSE  3IAPS  A^^D   PAPERS. 

and  the  beautiful  by  the  impious  hand  of  man,  then  art 
must  descend  from  her  altar  service  to  that  hard  work 
of  discipline. 

As  long  as  "we  inflict  or  supinely  permit  the  wilful 
destruction  of  life  by  rapid  process  or  slow,  we  need  to 
be  shocked  into  the  realization  of  our  guilt.  But  we 
cannot  grow  by  a  series  of  shocks ;  and  only  in  so  far  as 
we  are  conceivably  responsible  for  any  measure  of  this 
woe,  and  most  assuredly  only  in  so  far  as  the  sight  of  it 
is  awful  and  unbearable  to  us,  can  it  be  anything  but 
harmful  to  us  to  see  it.  So  far  as  it  gives  any  pleasure 
it  blunts  or  degrades.  It  is  only  the  faith  that  God  wills 
that  not  one  of  His  children  should  perish,  and  that  Avith 
Him  all  things  are  possible,  in  His  eternity,  which  makes 
it  endurable  to  look  for  one  moment  upon  the  starvation 
and  degradation  of  mind  and  soul,  the  defacement  of  the 
image  of  God  by  man,  in  Millet's  '•  Laborer."  Strange 
that  we  can  bear  so  constantly  the  sight  of  the  real 
laborer  ;  that  the  back  bent,  never  to  stand  erect  in  the 
true  figure  of  a  man,  the  stolid  and  vacant  face,  should 
be  looked  upon  with  such  equanimity  and  apathetic 
acceptance. 

The  pictures  of  Jean  Francois  Millet  illustrate  well  the 
limit  beyond  which  art  cannot  go  into  the  realm  of  gloom 
and  wrong.  They  are  entirely  true  always.  They  re- 
flect perfectly  the  life  and  \vork  of  the  people  he  knew 
best,  and  of  whose  life  he  was  part.  They  are  beautiful 
and  artistic,  or  painful  and  inartistic,  just  in  the  degree 
in  which  naturalness,  the  joy,  the  rightness,  or  the  un- 
naturalness,  severity,  gloom  and  slavery  of  that  life 
predominate.  From  the  child  carrying  a  lamb  in  her 
arms,  and  followed    b}-  the  loving   mother    and    whole 


ART  AND   LABOR.  175 

docile  flock ;  the  father  stretching  out  his  anus  to  his 
baby,  graceful  in  his  love  through  the  clumsiness  of  his 
excessive  toil ;  all  the  dreary  distance  to  that  heart- 
breaking image  of  man's  desecration  he  passes,  through 
every  step  of  increasing  backache  and  stolidity,  fear, 
less  and,  indeed,  helpless.  It  is  the  awful  record  of  a 
soul  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  recording  them  as  he 
must  in  his  art  language,  which  ceases  to  be  artistic,  and 
becomes  ugly,  inartistic,  inarticulate,  and  tinally  refuses 
to  go  farther  into  the  discord  of  man's  desolate,  stifled, 
degraded  life.  Behind  the  laborer  with  the  hoe  stretch 
God's  earth  and  sky.  ''  "With  these  opeu  witnesses,  you 
have  done  that,  0  man !  "What  yoii  have  done  in  dark- 
ness, away  from  the  face  of  these  witnesses,  my  art 
cannot  say."  Xo  true  art  can.  Into  the  prison-houses  of 
earth,  its  sweat-shops  and  underground  lodging-houses, 
art  cannot  follow. 

"Whatever  the  inspiring  motive  of  art,  though  there  be 
in  it  pain  and  struggle,  the  result  must  be  one  of  triumph, 
at  least  of  hope.  Art  can  never  present  humanity  as 
overborne.  It  cannot  let  the  hostile  principle,  pain,  sor- 
row, sin,  at  the  last  conquer.  Just  where  it  begins  to 
smother  and  snuff  out  the  flame  of  life,  art  turns  away. 

"VMien  life  reaches  a  point  at  Avhich  it  can  furnish  no 
more  material  for  art,  we  cannot  look  to  it  for  an  artistic 
people.  If  in  all  the  environment  of  a  man's  life,  there 
is  nothing  which  can  inspire  a  true  work  of  art,  there  is 
nothing  to  inspire  a  true  love  of  it,  could  it  be  produced. 
The  love  of  the  beautiful  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on ; 
and  the  food  must  be  the  common  bread  of  life.  That 
which  makes  the  art-loving  people,  makes  the  artist  also. 
Every  nation  which  has  left  a  great  art  record  has  lived 


17G  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

an  artistic  life.  The  artist  is  not  a  product  of  spon- 
taneous generation.  Every  Athenian,  every  Florentine 
boy,  saw  daily  in  the  street  the  expression  of  the  most 
perfect  thought  of  his  people,  reflecting  their  thought  of 
God  ;  and  he  saw  it,  side  by  side  with  God's  own  thought, 
undefaced  and  undefiled.  He  saw  column  and  tower  and 
statue  standing  against  a  sky,  the  pure,  serene,  tender, 
infinite  mirror  of  the  divine  intelligence  and  love  ;  and 
hills,  the  unswerving  image  of  divine  steadfastness.  He 
saw  them  unpolluted  by  the  smoke,  and  undistracted  by 
the  din  of  commercial  strife.  Poor  or  rich,  the  best  his 
nation  wrought  was  his.  He  must  be  taught  his  art  as 
a  craft,  if  he  were  to  follow  it ;  and  he  did  learn  it  pre- 
cisely as  a  craft  which  must  be  honestly  and  industri- 
ously practised.  But  first  and  always  he  lived  it,  as  a 
life,  in  common  with  the  life  of  his  nation. 

The  boy  of  our  great  cities,  rich  or  poor  (we  are  so 
far  democratic),  has  this  common  inheritance.  He  sees 
from  his  earliest  years  the  mart ;  not  the  mercato  vecchto 
of  Florence,  where  the  angel  faces  of  Delia  Robbia  looked 
down  above  the  greengrocer's  wares  in  the  open  booth, 
from  out  wreaths  of  fruit  and  flowers  that  vied  with 
those  below ;  but  our  mercato  nuovo.  He  sees  there 
walls  high  and  monotonous ;  windows  all  alike  (which 
he  who  built  had  no  pleasure  in)  ;  piles  of  merchandise, 
not  devised  with  curious  interest  and  pleasant  exercise 
of  inventive  faculty,  but  with  stolid,  mechanical  indif- 
ference ;  garish  wares,  and  faces  too  harassed  and  hur- 
ried to  give  back  greeting.  These  belong  to  rich  and 
poor  alike.  But  here  the  lots  diverge.  The  poor  lad 
goes,  not  to  his  sheep,  like  Giotto,  nor  to  keeping  his 
feet  warm,  like  Luca,  in  a  basket  of  shavings,  while  he 


AliT  Ayi)   LABOR.  177 

works  cheerily  at  his  art  and  saves  fire ;  he  goes  home 
to  the  dreary  tenement,  not  fireless,  but  with  closed 
windows  to  keep  its  heat  within,  dingy  plaster,  steam 
of  Avashing  and  odors  of  cooking,  near  discordant  voices, 
loneliness  of  a  crowded  life  without  companionship  or 
high  ideals ;  and  for  view  of  hills  and  sky,  the  theatre 
bills  on  the  walls  across  the  street,  and  factory  chim- 
neys. 

The  son  of  the  rich  man  goes  home  to  his  father's 
house.  Through  plate  glass  and  lace  curtains  he  looks 
across  at  his  neighbor's  father's  house,  Avith  its  lace  cur- 
tains, —  perhaps  a  little  less  costly,  perhaps  a  little  more. 
Up  and  down  the  street  he  compares  the  upholstery,  the 
equipages,  the  number  and  formality  of  the  servants  be- 
longing to  the  establishments  which  represent  his  so- 
cial life.  He  has  flowers  in  a  greenhouse ;  he  has  fine 
clothes ;  he  has  books ;  he  has  pictures.  Does  he  live 
an  artistic  life  ?  Can  we  look  to  him  for  the  great  art 
of  the  future  ?  Alas !  "  The  life  of  the  poor  is  too 
painful ;  the  life  of  the  rich  too  vulgar."  Rather,  is  not 
the  life  of  each  both  painful  and  vulga'r  to  a  degree 
which  seems  almost  beyond  hope  ?  '•  The  haggard  de- 
spair of  cotton-factory,  coal-mine  operatives  in  these 
days  is  painful  to  behold  ;  but  not  so  painful,  hideous  to 
the  inner  sense,  as  that  brutish,  God-forgetting,  Profit- 
and-loss  Philosophy  and  Life-Theory  which  we  hear 
jangled  on  all  hands  of  us,  from  the  throats  and  pens 
and  thoughts  of  ail-but  all  men."  ^  Happily,  at  least 
for  art,  there  remains  that  "  all-l)ut "  modicum,  —  the 
tenaciously  impractical  and  unbusiness-like,  the  incor- 
rigibly unconvinced  as  to  the  supreme  importance  of 
1  Cailyle,  Past  and  Present. 


178  nULL-EOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

'•'  selling  cotton  cheaper."  Else  "  vacuum  an(J  the  serene 
blue "  would,  indeed,  "  be  much  handsomer "  than  this 
our  civilization.  For  the  children  of  the  "  degraded 
poor,"  and  the  degraded  rich  as  Avell,  in  oi:r  present 
mode  of  life,  there  is  no  artistic  hope  outside  of  miracle. 

There  is  one  hope  for  us  all,  —  a  new  life,  a  freed  life. 
He  who  hopes  to  help  art  survive  on  earth  till  the  new 
life  dawn,  must  indeed  feed  the  hungry  with  good  things. 
This  must  he  do,  but  not  neglect  for  this  the  more  com- 
passionate and  far-reaching  aim,  the  freeing  of  the  art- 
power  of  the  whole  nation  and  race  by  enabling  them  to 
work  in  gladness  and  not  in  woe.  It  is  a  feeble  and 
narrow  imagination  which  holds  out  to  chained  hands 
fair  things  which  they  cannot  grasp, — things  which 
they  could  fashion  for  themselves  were  they  but  free. 

The  soul  of  man  in  the  commercial  and  industrial 
struggle  is  in  a  state  of  siege.  He  is  fighting  for  his 
life.  It  is  merciful  and  necessary  to  pass  in  to  him  the 
things  which  sustain  his  courage  and  keep  him  alive,  but 
the  effectual  thing  is  to  raise  the  siege. 

A  settlement,  if  it  is  true  to  its  ideal,  must  stand 
equally  for  both  aims.  It  must  work  with  all  energy 
and  courage  toward  the  rescue  of  those  bound  under  the 
slavery  of  commerce  and  the  wage-law;  with  all  absti- 
nence it  must  discountenance  wasting  human  life  in  the 
making  of  valueless  things;  with  all  faith  it  must  urge 
forward  the  building  up  of  a  state  in  which  cruel  con- 
trasts of  surfeit  and  Avant,  of  idleness  and  overwork, 
shall  not  be  found.  By  holding  art  and  all  good  fruit  of 
life  to  be  the  right  of  all ;  by  urging  all,  because  of  this 
their  common  need,  to  demand  time  and  means  for  sup- 
plying it ;  by  reasonableness  in  the  doing,  with  others, 


AET  AXD  LABOR.  179 

of  useful,  wholesome,  beneticent  work,  and  the  enjoy- 
ment, with  others,  of  rightful  and  sharable  pleasure, 
a  settlement  should  make  toward  a  social  state  which 
shall  finally  supplant  this  incredible  and  impious  war- 
fare of  the  children  of  God. 

"Whatever  joy  is  to  us  ennobling;  whatever  things 
seem  to  us  made  for  blessing,  and  not  for  weariness 
and  woe ;  whatever  knowledge  lifts  us  out  of  things 
paltry  and  narrowing,  and  exalts  and  expands  our  life ; 
whatever  life  itself  is  real  and  worthy  to  endure,  as 
there  is  measure  of  faith  in  us,  and  hope  and  love  and 
patience,  let  us  live  this  life.  And  let  us  think  on  our 
brothers,  that  they  may  live  it  too;  for  without  them 
we  cannot  live  it  if  we  would ;  and  when  we  and  they 
shall  have  this  joy  of  life,  then  we  shall  speak  from  within 
it,  and  our  speech  shall  be  sweet,  and  men  will  listen 
and  be  glad.  "What  we  do  with  our  hands  will  be  fair, 
and  men  shall  have  pleasure  therein.  This  will  be  art. 
Otherwise  we  cannot  all  have  it ;  and  until  all  have  it 
in  some  measure,  none  can  have  it  in  great  measure. 
And  if  gladness  ceases  upon  the  earth,  and  we  turn 
the  fair  earth  into  a  prison-house  for  men  with  hard 
and  loveless  labor,  art  will  die. 


X. 


THE   SETTLEMENT  AS   A    FACTOR    IN    THE 
LABOR  2I0VEMENT. 


THE    SETTLEMENT    AS    A    FACTOR    IN    THE 
LABOR    MOVEMENT. 

JANE    ADDAM8. 

OxE  man  or  group  of  men  sometimes  reveal  to  their 
contemporaries  a  higher  conscience  by  simply  incorpo- 
rating into  the  deed  what  has  been  before  but  a  philo- 
sophic proposition.  By  this  deed  the  common  code  of 
ethics  is  stretched  to  a  higher  point. 

Such  an  act  of  moral  significance,  for  instance,  was 
John  Burns's  loyalty  to  the  dockers'  strike  of  East 
London.  ''The  injury  to  one"  did  at  last  actually  "be- 
come the  concern  of  all ; "  and  henceforth  the  man  who 
does  not  share  that  concern  drops  below  the  standard 
ethics  of  his  day.  The  proposition  which  Avorkingmen 
had  long  quoted  was  at  last  incarnated  by  a  mechanic, 
who  took  his  position  so  intelligently  that  he  carried 
with  him  the  best  men  in  England,  and  set  the  public 
conscience.  Other  men  became  ashamed  of  a  wrong 
to  which  before  they  had  been  easily  indifferent. 

When  the  social  conscience,  if  one  may  use  the  ex- 
pression, has  been  thus  strikingly  formulated,  it  is  not 
so  hard  for  others  to  follow.  They  do  it  weakly  and 
stumblingly  perhaps ;  but  they  yet  see  a  glimmer  of 
light  of  which  the  first  man  could  not  be  sure,  and  they 
have  a  code  of  ethics  upon  which  the  first  man  was 
vague.  They  are  also  conscious  of  the  backing  of  a 
large  share  of  the  community  who  before  this  expres- 
sion knew  not  the  compunction  of  their  own  hearts.     A 

183 


184  nULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

settlement  accepts  the  etliics  of  its  contemporaries  that 
the  sharing  of  the  life  of  the  poor  is  essential  to  the 
understanding  and  bettering  of  that  life  ;  but  by  its  very 
existence  it  adopts  this  modern  code  somewhat  formally. 
The  social  injury  of  the  meanest  man  not  only  becomes 
its  concern,  but  by  virtue  of  its  very  locality  it  has  put 
itself  into  a  position  to  see,  as  no  one  but  a  neighbor 
can  see,  the  stress  and  need  of  those  Avho  bear  the  brunt 
of  the  social  injury.  A  settlement  has  not  only  taken 
a  pledge  towards  those  thus  injured,  but  it  is  placed 
where  the  motive-power  for  the  fulfilment  of  such  a 
pledge  is  constantly  renewed.  Propinquity  is  an  un- 
ceasing factor  in  its  existence. 

A  review  of  the  sewing-trades,  as  seen  from  a  settle- 
ment, will  be  sufficient  to  illustrate  this  position. 

Hull-House  is  situated  in  the  midst  of  the  sweaters' 
district  of  Chicago.  The  residents  came  to  the  district 
with  the  general  belief  that  organization  for  working- 
people  was  a  necessity.  They  would  doubtless  have 
said  that  the  discovery  of  the  power  to  combine  was  the 
distinguishing  discover}-  of  our  time ;  that  we  are  using 
this  force  somewhat  awkwardly,  as  men  use  that  which 
is  newly  discovered.  In  social  and  political  affairs  the 
power  to  combine  often  works  harm ;  but  it  is  already 
operating  to  such  an  extent  in  commercial  affairs,  that 
the  manufacturer  who  does  not  combine  with  others  of 
his  branch  is  in  constant  danger  of  failure ;  that  a  rail- 
road cannot  be  successfully  projected  unless  the  interests 
of  parallel  roads  are  consulted ;  and  that  working-peo- 
ple likewise  cannot  be  successful  until  they  too,  learn, 
skilfully  to  avail  themselves  of  this  power. 

This    was   to  the    residents,   as   to  many    people,   an 


A    FACTOIi    IX    THE  LABOR   MOVEMENT.     185 

accepted  proposition,  but  not  a  working  formula.  It 
had  not  tlie  driving  force  of  a  conviction.  The  resi- 
dents have  lived  for  five  years  in  a  neighborhood  largely 
given  over  to  the  sewing-trades,  which  is  an  industry 
totally  disorganized.  Having  observed  the  workers  in 
this  trade  as  compared  to  those  in  organized  trades,  they 
have  graduall}'  discovered  that  lack  of  organization  in 
a  trade  tends  to  the  industrial  helplessness  of  the 
workers  in  that  trade.  If  in  all  departments  of  social, 
political,  and  commercial  life,  isolation  is  a  blunder,  and 
results  in  dreariness  and  apathy,  then  in  industrial  af- 
fairs isolation  is  a  social  crime ;  for  it  thex-e  tends  to 
extermination. 

This  process  of  extermination  entails  starvation  and 
suffering,  and  the  desperate  moral  disintegration  which 
inevitably  follows  in  their  train,  until  the  need  of  organ- 
ization in  industry  gradually  assumes  a  moral  aspect. 
The  conviction  arrived  at  entails  a  social  obligation. 

Xo  trades  are  so  overcrowded  as  the  sewing-trades  ; 
for  the  needle  has  ever  been  the  refuge  of  the  unskilled 
woman.  The  Avages  jiaid  throughout  the  manufacture 
of  clothing  are  less  than  those  in  any  other  trade.  In 
order  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  workers,  lack  of 
skill  and  absence  of  orderly  life,  the  work  has  been  so 
subdivided  that  almost  no  skill  is  required  after  the 
garment  leaves  the  cutter.  It  is  given  practically  to 
the  one  who  is  at  hand  when  it  is  ready,  and  who  does 
it  for  the  least  mone}'.  This  subdivision  and  low  wage 
have  gone  so  far,  that  the  woman  who  does  home  fin- 
ishing alone  cannot  possibly  gain  by  it  a  living  wage. 
The  residents  of  Hull-House  have  carefully  investigated 
many  cases,  and  are  ready  to  assert  that  the   Italian 


186  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AXD   PAPERS. 

widow  who  finishes  the  cheapest  goods,  although  she 
sews  from  six  in  the  morning  until  eleven  at  night,  can 
only  get  enough  to  keep  her  children  clothed  and  fed  ; 
while  for  her  rent  and  fuel  she  must  always  depend 
upon  charity  or  the  hospitality  of  her  country-men.  If 
the  American  sewing-woman,  supporting  herself  alone, 
lives  on  bread  and  butter  and  tea,  she  finds  a  Bohemian 
woman  next  door  whose  diet  of  black  bread  and  coffee 
enables  her  to  undercut.  She  competes  with  a  wife 
who  is  eager  to  have  home  finishing  that  she  may  add 
something  to  the  family  comforf ;  or  with  a  daughter, 
who  takes  it  that  she  may  buy  a  wedding  outfit. 

The  Hebrew  tailor,  the  man  with  a  family  to  support, 
who.  but  for  this  competition  of  unskilled  women  and 
girls,  might  earn  a  wage  upon  which  a  family  could  sub- 
sist, is  obliged,  in  order  to  support  them  at  all,  to  put 
his  little  children  at  work  as  soon  as  they  can  sew  on 
buttons. 

It  does  not  help  his  industrial  situation  that  the 
woman  and  girl  who  have  brought  it  about  have  ac- 
cepted the  lower  wages  in  order  to  buy  comforts  for  an 
invalid  child,  or  to  add  to  the  earnings  of  an  aged  father. 
The  mother  who  sews  on  a  gross  of  buttons  for  seven 
cents,  in  order  to  buy  a  blue  ribbon  with  which  to  tie  up 
her  little  daughter's  hair,  or  the  mother  who  finishes  a 
dozen  vests  for  five  cents,  with  which  to  buy  her  chil- 
dren a  loaf  of  bread,  commits  unwittingly  a  crime 
against  her  fellow-workers,  although  our  hearts  may 
thrill  with  admiration  for  her  heroism,  and  ache  with 
pity  over  her  misery. 

The  maternal  instinct  and  family  affection  is  woman's 
most  holy  attribute ;  but  if  she  enters  industrial  life,  that 


A    FACTOR   IN    THE  LAIlOli    MOVEMENT.     187 

is  not  enough.  She  must  supplement  lier  family  con- 
science by  a  social  and  an  industrial  conscience.  She 
must  widen  her  family  affection  to  embrace  the  children 
of  the  community.  She  is  working  havoc  in  the  sewing- 
trades,  because  Avith  the  meagre  equipment  sufficient  for 
family  life  she  has  entered  industrial  life. 

Have  we  any  right  to  place  before  untrained  women 
the  alternative  of  seeing  their  little  children  suffer,  or  of 
complicating  the  industrial  condition  until  all  the  chil- 
dren of  the  community  are  suffering  ?  We  know  of 
course  what  their  decision  would  be.  But  the  residents 
of  a  settlement  are  not  put  to  this  hard  choice,  although 
it  is  often  difficult  to  urge  organization  when  they  are 
flying  to  the  immediate  relief  of  the  underfed  children 
in  the  neighborhood. 

If  the  settlement,  then,  is  convinced  that  in  industrial 
affairs  lack  of  organization  tends  to  the  helplessness  of 
the  isolated  worker,  and  is  a  menace  to  the  entire  com- 
munity, then  it  is  bound  to  pledge  itself  to  industrial 
organization,  and  to  look  about  it  for  the  lines  upon 
which  to  work.  And  at  this  point  the  settlement  enters 
into  what  is  more  technically  known  as  the  labor  move- 
ment. 

The  labor  movement  may  be  called  a  concerted  effort 
among  the  workers  in  all  trades  to  obtain  a  more  equi- 
table distribution  of  the  product,  and  to  secure  a  more 
orderly  existence  for  the  laborers.  How  may  the  settle- 
ment be  of  value  to  this  effort  ? 

If  the  design  of  the  settlement  is  not  so  much  the 
initiation  of  new  measures,  but  fraternal  co-operation 
with  all  good  which  it  finds  in  its  neighborhood,  then 
the   most   obvious   line    of   action  will  be  organization 


188  IIULL-IIOUSE  MAPS  AND    PAPERS. 

through  the  trades-unions,  a  movement  already  well  es- 
tablished. 

The  trades-unions  say  to  each  workingman,  "Associ- 
ate yourself  with  the  fellow-workers  in  your  trade.  Let 
your  trade  organization  federate  with  the  allied  trades, 
and  the}^,  in  turn,  with  the  National  and  International 
Federation,  until  working-people  become  a  solid  body, 
ready  for  concerted  action.  It  is  the  only  possible  way 
to  prevent  cuts  in  the  rate  of  wages,  and  to  regulate  the 
hours  of  work.  Capital  is  organized,  and  has  influence 
with  which  to  secure  legislation  in  its  behalf.  We  are 
scattered  and  feeble  because  we  do  not  work  together." 

Trades-unionism,  in  spite  of  the  many  pits  into  which 
it  has  fallen,  has  the  ring  of  altruism  about  it.  It  is 
clearly  the  duty  of  the  settlement  to  keep  it  to  its  best 
ideal,  and  to  bring  into  it  something  of  the  spirit  which 
has  of  late  characterized  the  unions  in  England.  This 
keeping  to  the  ideal  is  not  so  easy  as  the  more  practical 
work  of  increasing  unions,  although  that  is  difficult 
enough.  Of  the  two  women's  unions  organized  at  Hull- 
House,  and  of  the  four  which  have  regularly  held  their 
meetings  there,  as  well  as  those  that  come  to  us  during 
strikes  at  various  times,  I  should  venture  to  say  of  only 
one  of  them  that  it  is  filled  with  the  new  spirit,  although 
they  all  have  glimpses  of  it,  and  even  during  times  of 
stress  and  disturbance  strive  for  it. 

It  was  perliaps  natural,  from  the  situation,  that  the 
unions  organized  at  Hull-House  should  have  been  those 
in  the  sewing-trades.  The  shirtmakers  were  organized 
in  the  spring  of  1891.  The  immediate  cause  was  a  cut 
in  a  large  factory  from  twenty-five  cents  a  dozen  for  the 
making  of  collars  and  cuffs  to  twelve  cents.     The  factory 


A   FACTOR   IN    THE  LAI'.OU   MOVEMENT.     189 

was  a  model  in  regard  to  its  sanitary  arrangements,  and 
the  sole  complaint  of  the  girls  was  of  the  long  hours  and 
low  rate  of  wages.  The  strike  which  followed  the  for- 
mation of  the  union  was  wholly  unsuccessful ;  but  the 
union  formed  then  has  thriven  ever  since,  and  has  lately 
grown  so  strong  that  it  has  recently  succeeded  in  secur- 
ing the  adoption  of  the  national  labels. 

The  cloakmakers  were  organized  at  Hull-House  in  the 
spring  of  1892.  Wages  had  been  steadily  falling,  and 
there  was  great  depression  among  the  workers  of  the 
trade.  The  number  of  employees  in  the  inside  shops 
was  being  rapidly  reduced,  and  the  work  of  the  entire 
trade  handed  over  to  the  sweaters.  The  union  among 
the  men  numbered  two  hundred;  but  the  skilled  workers 
were  being  rapidly  supplanted  by  untrained  women,  who 
had  no  conscience  in  regard  to  the  wages  they  accepted. 
The  men  had  urged  organization  for  several  years, 
but  were  unable  to  secui-e  it  among  the  women.  One 
apparently  insurmountable  obstacle  had  been  the  impos- 
sibility of  securing  any  room,  save  one  over  a  saloon,  that 
was  large  enough  and  cheap  enough  for  a  general  meet- 
ing. To  a  saloon  hall  the  women  had  steadfastly 
refused  to  go,  save  once,  when,  under  the  pressure  of  a 
strike,  the  girls  in  a  certain  shop  had.  met  with  the  men 
from  the  same  shop,  over  one  of  the  more  decent  saloons, 
only  to  be  upbraided  by  their  families  upon  their  return 
home.  They  of  course  refused  ever  to  go  again.  The 
first  meeting  at  Hull-House  was  composed  of  men  and 
girls,  and  tAvo  or  three  of  the  residents.  The  meeting 
was  a  revelation  to  all  present.  The  men,  perhaps  forty 
in  number,  were  Russian-Jewish  tailors,  many  of  whom 
could  comnuiiul  not  even  broken   English.     They  were 


190  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND  PAPERS. 

ill-dressed  and  grimy,  suspicious  that  Hull-House  was  a 
spy  in  the  service  of  the  capitalists.  They  were  skilled 
workers,  easily  superior  to  the  girls  when  sewing  on  a 
cloak,  but  shamefaced  and  constrained  in  meeting  with 
them.  The  American-Irish  girls  were  well-dressed,  and 
comparatively  at  ease.  They  felt  chaperoned  by  the 
presence  of  the  residents,  and  talked  volubly  among 
themselves.  These  two  sets  of  people  were  held  to- 
gether only  by  the  pressure  upon  their  trade.  They 
were  separated  by  strong  racial  differences,  by  language, 
by  nationality,  by  religion,  by  mode  of  life,  by  every 
possible  social  distinction.  The  interpreter  stood  be- 
tween the  two  sides  of  the  room,  somewhat  helpless. 
He  was  clear  upon  the  economic  necessity  for  combina- 
tion ;  he  realized  the  mutual  interdependence ;  but  he 
was  baffled  by  the  social  aspect  of  the  situation.  The 
residents  felt  that  between  these  men  and  girls  was  a 
deeper  gulf  than  the  much-talked  of  "  chasm  "  between 
the  favored  and  unfavored  classes.  The  working-girls 
before  them,  who  were  being  forced  to  cross  such  a 
gulf,  had  a  positive  advantage  over  the  cultivated  girl 
who  consciously,  and  sometimes  heroically,  crosses  the 
"chasm  "  to  join  hands  with  her  working  sisters. 

There  was  much  less  difference  of  any  sort  between 
the  residents  and  working-girls  than  between  the  men 
and  girls  of  the  same  trade.  It  was  a  spectacle  only  to 
be  found  in  an  American  city,  under  the  latest  condi- 
tions of  trade-life.  Working-people  among  themselves 
are  being  forced  into  a  social  democracy  from  the  pres- 
sure of  the  economic  situation.  It  presents  an  educa- 
ting and  broadening  aspect  of  no  small  value. 

The  Woman's  Cloakmakers'  Union   has  never   been 


A    FACTOIi    IN    THE  LABOR   MOVEMENT.      101 

large,  but  it  alwaj-s  has  been  characterized  by  the  spirit 
of  generosity  which  marked  its  organization.  It  feels 
a  strong  sense  of  obligation  toward  the  most  ill-paid  and 
ignorant  of  the  sweaters'  victims,  and  no  working-people 
of  Chicago  have  done  more  for  abolition  of  the  sweating- 
system  than  this  handful  of  women. 

But  the  labor  movement  is  by  no  means  so  simple 
as  trades-unionism.  A  settlement  finds  in  the  move- 
ment devoted  men  who  feel  keenly  the  need  for  better 
industrial  organization,  but  who  insist  that  industrial 
organization  must  be  part  of  the  general  re-organization 
of  society.  The  individualists,  for  instance,  insist  that 
we  will  never  secure  equal  distribution  until  we  have 
equality  of  opportunity;  that  all  State  and  city  fran- 
chises, all  privilege  of  railroad,  bank,  and  corporation, 
must  be  removed  before  competition  will  be  absolutely 
free,  and  the  man  with  his  labor  alone  to  offer  will  have 
a  fair  chance  with  the  man  who  offers  anything  else; 
that  the  sole  function  of  the  State  is  to  secure  the  free- 
dom of  each,  guarded  by  the  like  freedom  of  all,  and 
that  each  man  free  to  work  for  his  own  existence  and 
advantage  will  by  this  formula  work  out  our  industrial 
development.  The  individualist  then  works  constantly 
for  the  recall  of  franchise  and  of  special  privilege,  and 
for  the  untrammelled  play  of  each  man's  force.  There 
is  much  in  our  inheritance  that  responds  to  this,  and  he 
has  followers  among  workingmen  and  among  capitalists  ; 
those  who  fear  to  weaken  the  incentive  to  individual 
exertion,  and  those  who  believe  that  any  interference 
would  work  injuriously.  The  residents  of  a  settlement 
hear  the  individualist  pleading  in  many  trades  assem- 
blies.    Opposite  to  him,  springing  up  in  discussion  every 


192  UULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

time  he  speaks,  is  the  socialist  in  all  varieties.  The 
scientific  socialist  reads  his  Karl  Marx,  and  sees  a  grad- 
ual and  inevitable  absorption  of  all  the  means  of  pro- 
duction and  of  all  capital  by  one  entity,  called  the 
community.  He  makes  out  a  strong  case  because  he 
is  usually  a  German  or  a  Kussian,  with  a  turn  for  eco- 
nomic discussion,  and  widely  read.  He  sees  in  the  pres- 
ent tendency  toAvards  the  concentration  of  capital,  and 
in  the  growth  of  trusts  and  monopolies,  an  inevitable 
transition  to  the  socialistic  state.  Every  concentration 
of  capital  into  fewer  hands  but  increases  the  mass  of 
those  whose  interests  are  opposed  to  the  maintenance 
of  its  power,  and  vastly  simplifies  the  final  absorption. 
He  contends  that  we  have  already  had  the  transforma- 
tion of  scattered  private  property  into  capitalistic  prop- 
erty, and  that  it  is  inevitable  that  it  should  be  turned 
into  collective  property.  In  ithe  former  cases  we  had 
the  ex-propriation  of  the  mass  of  the  people  by  a  few 
usurpers ;  in  the  latter  we  have  the  ex-propriation  of 
a  few  usurpers  by  the  mass  of  people.  He  points  with 
pride  to  the  strong  tendency  towards  State  regulation 
of  the  means  of  transportation,  and  of  many  industries, 
and  he  urges  legislative  check  and  control  at  every 
point. 

Between  these  two  divergent  points  of  vicAV  we  find 
many  shades  of  opinion  and  many  modifications  of  phi- 
losophy ;  but  i^erhaps  a  presentation  of  these  two,  as 
heard  many  times  from  earnest  workingmen,  will  illus- 
trate how  difficult  a  settlement  finds  it  to  be  liberal  in 
tone,  and  to  decide  what  immediate  measures  are  in 
the  line  of  advantage  to  the  labor  movement  and  which 
ones  are  aL^ainst  it. 


A    FACTOR   IX    THE  LABOU   MOVEMENT.     103 

It  has  been  said  tliat  the  imaginatiou  in  Ainoiica  lias 
been  seized  in  due  tuni  by  the  minister,  the  soldier,  and 
the  lawyer,  \\\\o  have  suce-essivel}-  held  the  political  ap- 
pointments ;  but  that  it  is  now  the  turn  of  the  economist ; 
that  the  man  who  woidd  secure  votes  and  a  leadership 
in  politics  is  the  one  who  has  a  line  of  action  to  propose 
which  shall  bring  order  out  of  the  present  industrial 
chaos.  This  may  be  illustrated  by  the  marvellous  growth 
of  the  single-tax  movement,  which  offers  a  definite  re- 
medial measure.  Is  it  not  true  that  our  knotty  theologi- 
cal difficidties  as  matters  for  prolonged  discussion  are 
laid  aside  ?  Is  it  not  true  that  the  interpretation  of 
the  Constitution,  and  tlie  standard  of  action  for  the  law- 
abiding  and  upright  citizen,  are  well  determined  in  men's 
minds  ?  But  that  the  moral  enterprise  of  each  man, 
not  by  any  means  his  morality.  l)ut  his  moral  enterprise, 
has  to  be  tested  by  his  attitude  toward  tlie  industrial 
problem  ?  The  crucial  question  of  the  time  is,  ''  In 
■what  attitude  stand  ye  toward  the  present  industrial 
system  ?  Are  you  content  that  greed  and  the  seizing 
upon  disadvantage  and  the  pushing  of  the  weaker  to 
the  wall  shall  rule  your  business  life,  while  in  your 
family  and  social  life  you  live  so  differently?  Are 
you  content  that  Christianity  shall  have  no  play  in 
trade  ?  "  If  these  questions  press  upon  all  of  us,  tlien 
a  settlement  must  surely  face  the  industrial  problem 
as  a  test  of  its  sincerity,  as  a  test  of  the  unification 
of  its  interests  with  the  absorbing  interests  of  its 
neighbors.  Must  it,  then,  accejjt  the  creeds  of  one  or 
the  other  of  these  schools  of  social  thought,  and  work 
for  a  party ;  or  is  there  some  underlying  principle  upon 
which  the  settlement  can  stand,  as  in  its  Christianity  it 


194  EULL-IIOrSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

endeavors  to  stand  on  something  more  primitive  than 
either  Catholicism  or  Protestantism  ?  Can  it  find  the 
moral  question  involved  ?  Is  there  a  line  of  ethics 
which  its  action  ought  to  follow  ?  Is  it  possible  to 
make  the  slow  appeal  to  the  nobler  fibre  in  men,  and  to 
connect  it  with  that  tradition  of  what  is  just  and  right  ? 

A  glance  at  the  labor  movement  shows  that  the  pre- 
ponderating force  has  been  given  to  what  may  be  called 
negative  action.  Unions  use  their  power  to  frustrate 
the  designs  of  the  capitalist,  to  make  trouble  for  corpo- 
rations and  the  public,  such  as  is  involved,  for  instance, 
in  a  railroad  strike.  It  has  often  seemed  to  be  the  only 
method  of  arresting  attention  to  their  demands  ;  but  in 
America,  at  least,  they  have  come  to  trust  it  too  far. 

A  movement  cannot  be  carried  on  by  negating  other 
acts;  it  must  have  a  positive  force,  a  driving  and  self- 
sustaining  motive-power.  A  moral  revolution  cannot 
be  accomplished  by  men  who  are  held  together  merely 
because  they  are  all  smarting  under  a  sense  of  injury 
and  injustice,  although  it  may  be  begun  by  them. 

Men  thus  animated  may  organize  for  resistance,  they 
may  struggle  bravely  together,  and  may  destroy  that 
which  is  injurious,  but  they  cannot  build  up,  associ- 
ate, and  unite.  They  have  no  common,  collective  faith. 
The  labor  movement  in  America  bears  this  trace  of  its 
youth  and  immaturity.  As  the  first  social  organizations 
of  men  were  for  purposes  of  war  ;  as  they  combined 
to  defend  themselves,  or  to  destroy  their  enemies,  and 
only  later  they  united  for  creative  purposes  and  pacific 
undertakings,  so  the  labor  organizations  first  equip 
themselves  for  industrial  war,  and  much  later  attempt  to 
promote  peaceful  industrial  progress.     The  older  unions 


A    FACTOR   IN    THE  LABOll   MOVEMENT.     195 

have  already  reached  the  higher  devtdopment,  but  the 
unions  among  the  less  intelligent  and  less  skilled  work- 
men are  still  belligerent  and  organized  on  a  military 
b^sis,  and  unfortunately  give  color  to  the  entire  move- 
ment. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  men  who  work  excessively 
certain  weeks  in  the  year,  and  bear  enforced  idleness, 
harassed  by  a  fear  of  starvation,  during  certain  other 
weeks,  as  the  lumber-shovers  and  garment-workers  do, 
are  too  far  from  that  regulated  life  and  sanity  of  mind 
in  which  the  quiet  inculcation  of  moral  principle  is  pos- 
sible. It  is  also  doiibtless  true  that  a  more  miiform 
leisure  and  a  calmer  temper  of  mind  Avill  have  to  be 
secured  before  the  sense  of  injury  ceases  to  be  an  absorb- 
ing emotion.  The  labor  movement  is  bound,  therefore, 
to  work  for  shorter  hours  and  increased  wages  and  regu- 
larity of  work,  that  education  and  nnwal  reform  may 
come  to  the  individual  laborer ;  that  association  may  be 
put  upon  larger  principles,  and  assume  the  higher  fra- 
ternal aspect.  But  it  does  not  Avant  to  lose  sight  of  the 
end  in  securing  the  lueans,  nor  assume  success,  nor  even 
necessarily  the  beginnings  of  success,  when  these  first 
aims  are  attained.  It  is  easy  to  make  this  mistake. 
The  workingman  is  born  and  leared  in  a  certain  dis- 
comfort which  he  is  sure  the  rich  man  does  not  share 
with  him.  He  feels  constantly  the  restriction  which 
comes  from  untrained  power ;  he  realizes  that  his  best 
efforts  are  destined  to  go  round  and  round  in  a  circle 
circumscribed  by  his  industrial  op])ortunity,  and  it  is 
inevitable  that  he  should  over-estimate  the  possession 
of  wealth,  of  leisure,  and  of  education.  It  is  almost 
impossible  for  him  to  keep  his  sense  of  proportion. 


196  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

The  settlement  may  be  of  value  if  it  can  take  a 
larger  and  steadier  view  than  is  always  possible  to 
the  workingman,  smarting  under  a  sense  of  wrong;  or 
to  the  capitalist,  seeking  only  to  "  quiet  down,"  with- 
out regard  to  the  historic  significance  of  the  case,  and 
insisting  upon  the  inalienable  right  of  '•  invested  capi- 
tal," to  a  return  of  at  least  four  per  cent,  ignoring  human 
passion.  It  is  possible  to  recall  them  both  to  a  sense 
of  the  larger  development. 

A  century  ago  there  was  an  irresistil)le  impulse,  an 
upward  movement,  among  the  mass  of  people  to  have 
their  share  in  political  life,  —  hitherto  the  life  of  the 
privileged.  The  universal  franchise  was  demanded,  not 
only  as  a  holy  right,  but  as  a  means  of  entrance  into 
the  sunshine  of  liberty  and  equality.  There  is  a  simi- 
lar demand  at  the  close  of  this  century  on  the  part  of 
working-people,  but  this  time  it  is  for  a  share  in  the 
results  of  industry. 

It  is  an  impulse  to  come  out  into  the  sunshine  of 
Prosperity.  As  the  leaders  of  political  democracy  over- 
estimated the  possession  of  the  franchise,  and  believed 
it  would  obtain  blessings  for  the  Avorking-people  which 
it  has  not  done,  so,  doubtless,  the  leaders  of  the  labor 
movement  are  overestimating  the  possession  of  wealth 
and  leisure.  Mazzini  was  the  inspired  prophet  of  the 
political  democracy,  preaching  duties  and  responsibili- 
ties rather  than  rights  and  franchises ;  and  we  might 
call  Arnold  Toynbee  the  prophet  of  the  second  devel- 
opment when  we  contend  that  the  task  of  the  labor 
movement  is  the  interpretation  of  democracy  into  in- 
dustrial affairs.  In  that  remarkable  exposition  called 
"  Industry    and    Democracy,"    Toynbee    sets    forth    rhe 


A    FACTOR   IX    THE  LABOR   MOVEMENT.     107 

struggle  between  the  masters  and  men  during  the  in- 
dustrial revolution.  Two  ideals  in  regard  to  the  rela- 
tionship between  employer  and  eniplo3-ee  were  then 
developed.  Carlyle  represented  one,  pleading  passion- 
ately for  it.  He  declared  that  the  rich  mill-owner's 
duty  did  not  end  with  the  '^  cash  nexus  ;  *'  that  after  he 
had  paid  his  men  he  should  still  cherish  them  in  sick- 
ness, protect  them  in  misfortune,  and  not  dismiss  them 
when  trade  was  bad.  In  one  word,  he  would  have  the 
rich  govern  and  protect  the  poor.  But  the  workers 
themselves,  the  mass  of  the  people,  had  caught  another 
ideal ;  they  dreamed  of  a  time  when  they  should  have 
no  need  of  protection,  but  Avhen  each  workman  should 
stand  by  the  side  of  his  employer —  the  free  citizen  of 
a  free  state.  Each  workingman  demanded,  not  class 
protection,  but  political  rights.  He  wished  to  be  a  unit ; 
not  that  he  might  be  isolated,  but  that  he  might  unite 
in  a  fuller  union,  first  with  his  fellow-workers,  and  then 
with  the  entire  people.  Toynbee  asks  who  was  right, 
Carlyle  or  the  people.  And  replies  that  the  people  were 
right  —  '-The  people  who,  sick  with  hunger  and  de- 
formed with  toil,  dreamed  that  democracy  would  bring 
deliverance."  And  democracy  did  save  industry.  It 
transformed  disputes  about  wages  from  social  feuds  into 
business  bargains.  It  swept  away  the  estranging  class 
elements  of  suspicion  and  arrogance.  <'  It  gradually 
did  away  with  the  feudal  notion  among  the  masters 
that  they  would  deal  with  their  men  one  at  a  time, 
denying  to  them  the  advantages  of  association."  It  is 
singular  that  in  America,  where  government  is  founded 
upon  the  principle  of  representation,  the  capitalist  should 
have  been  so  slow  to  accord  this  right  to  workingmen  ; 


198  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

that  he  should  refuse  so  steadily  to  treat  with  a  "  walk- 
ing delegate,"  and  so  long  maintain  that  no  "  outsider  " 
could  represent  the  men  in  his  shop. 

We  must  learn  to  trust  our  democracy,  giant-like  and 
threatening  as  it  may  appear  in  its  uncouth  strength 
and  untried  applications.  When  the  English  people 
were  demanding  the  charter,  the  English  nobility  pre- 
dicted that  the  franchise  would  be  used  to  inaugurate 
all  sorts  of  wild  measures,  to  overturn  long-established 
customs,  as  the  capitalist  noAV  sometimes  assumes  that 
higher  wages  will  be  spent  only  in  the  saloons.  In  both 
cases  there  is  a  failure  to  count  the  sobering  effect  of 
responsibility  in  the  education  and  development  Avhich 
attend  the  entrance  into  a  wider  life. 

The  effort  to  keep  the  movement  to  some  conscious- 
ness of  its  historic  value  in  the  race  development  is 
perhaps  no  more  difficult  than  to  keep  before  its  view 
the  larger  ethical  aims.  There  is  doubtless  a  tendency 
among  the  working  men  who  reac*h  leadership  in  the 
movement  to  yield  to  individual  ambition,  as  there  is 
among  capitalists  to  regard  class  interests,  and  yield 
only  that  which  must  be  yielded.  This  tendency  on  one 
side  to  yield  to  ambition,  and  on  the  other  to  give  in  to 
threats,  may  be  further  illustrated. 

The  poor  man  has  proverbially  been  the  tyrant  of 
poor  men  when  he  has  become  rich.  But  while  such 
a  man  was  yet  poor,  his  heart  was  closed  to  his  fellows, 
and  his  eyes  Avere  blinded  to  the  exploitation  of  them 
and  himself,  because  in  his  heart  he  hoped  one  day  to 
be  rich,  and  to  do  the  exploiting ;  because  he  secretl}' 
approved  the  action  of  his  master,  and  said,  "  I  would 
do  the  same  if  I  were  he." 


A    FACTOR   IN    THE  LABOR   MOV  KM  EST.     199 

"WorkiuLjineii  say,  sometimes,  that  the,  rich  will  not 
hear  the  complaint  of  the  j)oor  until  it  rises  into  a 
threat,  and  carries  a  suggestion  of  ruin  with  it ;  that 
they  then  throw  the  laborers  a  portion  of  the  product, 
to  save  the  remainder. 

As  the  tendency  to  warfare  shows  the  primitive  state 
of  the  labor  movement,  so  also  this  division  on  class  lines 
reveals  its  present  undeveloped  condition.  The  organi- 
zation of  society  into  huge  battalions  with  syndicates 
and  corporations  on  the  side  of  capital,  and  trades-unions 
and  federations  on  the  side  of  labor,  is  to  divide  the 
world  into  two  hostile  camps,  and  to  turn  us  back  into 
class  warfare  and  class  limitations.  All  our  experience 
tells  us  that  no  question  of  civilization  is  so  simple  as 
that,  nor  can  we  any  longer  settle  our  perplexities  by 
mere  good  fighting.  One  is  reminded  of  one's  childish 
conception  of  life  —  that  Right  and  Wrong  were  drawn 
up  in  battle  array  into  two  distinct  armies,  and  that  to 
join  the  army  of  Right  and  fight  bravely  would  be  to 
settle  all  problems. 

But  life  itself  teaches  us  nothing  more  inevitable  than 
that  right  and  wrong  are  most  confusedly  mixed ;  that 
the  blackest  wrong  is  by  our  side  and  within  our  own 
motives ;  that  right  does  not  dazzle  our  eyes  with  its  ra- 
diant shining,  but  has  to  be  found  by  exerting  patience, 
discrimination,  and  impartiality.  We  cease  to  listen  for 
the  bugle  note  of  victory  our  childish  imagination  antici- 
pated, and  learn  that  our  finest  victories  are  attained  in 
the  midst  of  self-distrust,  and  that  the  waving  banner  of 
triumph  is  sooner  or  later  trailed  to  the  dust  by  the 
weight  of  self-righteousness.  It  may  be  that  as  the 
labor  movement  grows  older  and  riper,  it  will  cease  to 


200  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND  PAPERS. 

divide  all  men  so  sharply  into  capitalists  and  proleta- 
rians, into  exploiter  and  exploited. 

We  may  live  to  remind  its  leaders  in  later  years,  as 
George  Eliot  has  so  skilfully  reminded  us,  that  the  path 
we  all  like  Avhen  we  first  set  out  in  our  youth  is  the  path 
of  martyrdom  and  endurance,  where  the  palm  branches 
grow ;  but  that  later  we  learn  to  take  the  steep  highway 
of  tolerance,  just  allowance,  and  self-blame,  where  there 
are  no  leafy  honors  to  be  gathered  and  worn.  As  the 
labor  movement  grows  older  its  leaders  may  catch  the 
larger  ethical  view  which  genuine  experience  always 
gives ;  they  may  have  a  chance  to  act  free  from  the 
pressure  of  threat  or  ambition.  They  should  have  noth- 
ing to  gain  or  lose,  save  as  they  rise  or  fall  with  their 
fellows.  In  raising  the  mass,  men  could  have  a  motive- 
power  as  much  greater  than  the  motive  for  individual 
success,  as  the  force  which  sends  the  sun  above  the 
horizon  is  greater  than  the  force  engendered  by  the 
powder  behind  the  rocket. 

Is  it  too  much  to  hope  that  as  the  better  organized  and 
older  trades-unions  are  fast  recognizing  a  solidarity  of 
labor,  and  acting  upon  the  literal  notion  of  brotherhood, 
that  they  will  later  perceive  the  larger  solidarity  which 
includes  labor  and  capital,  and  act  upon  the  notion  of 
universal  kinship  ?  That  before  this  larger  vision  of  life 
there  can  be  no  perception  of  "  sides  "  and  no  "  battle 
array  "  ?  In  the  light  of  the  developed  social  conscience 
the  "sympathetic  strike"  may  be  criticised,  not  because 
it  is  too  broad,  bvit  because  it  is  too  narrow,  and  because 
the  strike  is  but  a  wasteful  and  negative  demonstration 
of  ethical  fellowship.  In  the  summer  of  1894  the  Chicago 
unions  of  Russian-Jewish  cloakmakers,  German  composi- 


A   FACTOIi   I.\    THE  LAIKtl!   M< >\I:M i:.\T.      l!Ol 

tors,  ami  Boliemian  and  rolisli  Imti-liors,  struck  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  cause  of  the  American  Railway  Union, 
wliom  they  believed  to  be  standing  for  a  principle.  Does 
an  event  such  as  this,  clumsy  and  unsatisfactory  as  its 
results  are,  prefigure  the  time  when  no  factory  cliilil  in 
Chicago  can  be  overworked  and  underpaid  without  a 
protest  from  all  good  citizens,  capitalist  and  proletarian  ? 
Such  a  protest  would  be  founded  upon  an  ethical  sense 
so  strong  that  it  would  easily  override  business  interests 
and  class  prejudices. 

Manifestations  of  the  labor  movement  are  erratic  and 
ill-timed  because  of  the  very  strength  of  its  motive 
power.  A  settlement  is  not  affrighted  nor  dismayed 
when  it  sees  in  labor-meetings,  in  caucuses,  and  turbu 
lent  gatherings,  men  who  are  — 

"  Groping  for  the  right,  with  horny,  calloused  hands, 
And  staring  round  for  God  with  bloodshot  eyes," 

although  the  clumsy  hands  may  upset  some  heavy  pieces 
of  convention,  as  a  strong  blindman  overturns  furniture, 
and  the  bloodshot  eyes  may  be  wild  and  fanatical.  The 
settlement  is  unworthy  of  its  calling  if  it  is  too  timid  or 
dull  to  interpret  this  groping  and  staring.  But  the  set- 
tlenient  should  be  affrighted,  and  bestir  itself  to  action, 
when  the  groping  is  not  for  the  right,  but  for  the  mere 
purpose  of  overturning ;  when  the  staring  is  not  for  God, 
but  for  Mammon  —  and  there  is  a  natural  temptation  to- 
ward s  both. 

A  settlement  may  well  be  dismayed  when  it  sees 
Avorkingmen  apathetic  to  higher  motives,  and  thinking 
only  of  stratagems  by  which  to  outwit  the  capitalists ; 
or  when  workingmeu  justify  themselves  in   the   use  of 


202  BULL-HOUSE  MAPS  AND   PAPERS. 

base  measures,  saying  they  Lave  learned  the  lessons 
from  the  other  side.  Such  an  attitude  at  once  turns  the 
movement  from  a  development  into  a  struggle,  and  the 
sole  judge  left  between  the  adversaries  must  in  the  end 
be  force.  Class  intei-ests  become  the  governing  and  mo- 
tive power,  and  the  settlement  can  logically  be  of  no 
value  to  either  side.  Its  sympathies  are  naturally  much 
entangled  in  such  a  struggle,  but  to  be  of  value  it  must 
keep  its  judgment  clear  as  to  the  final  ethical  outcome  — 
and  this  requires  both  perceptions  and  training. 

fortunately,  every  action  may  be  analyzed  into  its 
permanent  and  transient  aspects.  The  transient  aspect 
of  the  strike  is  the  anger  and  opposition  against  the 
employer,  and  too  often  the  chagrin  of  failure.  The 
permanent  is  the  binding  together  of  the  strikers  in 
the  ties  of  association  and  brotherhood,  and  the  attain- 
ment of  a  more  democratic  relation  to  the  employer  ; 
and  it  is  becaiise  of  a  growing  sense  of  brotherhood 
and  of  democracy  in  the  labor  movement  that  we  see 
in  it  a  growing  ethical  power. 

Hence  the  duty  of  the  settlement  in  keeping  the  move- 
ment fro3n  becoming  in  any  sense  a  class  warfare  is  clear. 
There  is  a  temperamental  bitterness  among  working- 
men  which  is  both  inherited  and  fostered  by  the  condi- 
tions of  their  life  and  trade  ;  but  they  cannot  afford  to 
cherish  a  class  bitterness  if  the  labor  movement  is  to  be 
held  to  its  highest  possibilities.  A  class  working  for  a 
class,  and  against  another  class,  implies  that  within  itself 
there  should  be  ti-ades  working  for  trades,  individuals 
working  for  individuals.  The  universal  character  of 
the  movement  is  gone  from  the  start,  and  cannot  be 
caught  until  an  all-embracing  ideal  is  accepted. 


A   FACTOR    IX    TUK    L  Alio  II    MOV  KM  F.ST.     203 

A  recent  writer  luis  called  attention  to  the  fact  tluit 
the  position  of  the  power-lioldint;  classes  —  capitalists, 
as  we  call  them  just  now  —  is  being  gradually  under- 
mined by  the  disintegrating  influence  of  the  immense 
fund  of  altruistic  feeling  -with  which  society  has  become 
equipjied  ;  that  it  is  within  this  fund  of  altruism  that  we 
find  the  motive  force  which  is  slowly  enfranchising  all 
classes  and  gradually  insisting  upon  equality  of  condi- 
tion and  opportunity.  If  Ave  can  accept  this  explanation 
of  the  social  and  political  movements  of  our  time,  then 
it  is  clear  that  the  labor  movement  is  at  the  bottom  an 
ethical  movement,  and  a  manifestation  of  the  orderly 
development  of  the  race. 

The  settlement  is  pledged  to  insist. upon  the  unity 
of  life,  to  gather  to  itself  the  sense  of  righteousness  to  be 
found  in  its  neighborhood,  and  as  far  as  possible  in  its 
city ;  to  work  towards  the  betterment  not  of  oi^f^  kind  of 
people  or  class  of  people,  but  for  the  cc.nmon  good. 
The  settlement  believes  that  just  as  men  deprived  of 
comradeship  by  circumstances  or  law  go  back  to  the  bru- 
tality from  which  the}'  came,  so  any  class  or  set  of  men 
deprived  of  the  companionship  of  the  whole,  become 
correspondingly  decivilized  and  crippled.  No  part  of 
society  can  afford  to  get  along  without  the  others. 

The  settlement,  then,  urges  first,  the  organization  of 
working  people  in  order  that  as  much  leisure  and 
orderly  life  as  possible  may  be  secured  to  them  in  which 
to  carry  out  the  higher  aims  of  living ;  in  the  second 
place,  it  should  make  a  constant  effort  to  bring  to  bear 
upon  the  labor  movement  a  consciousness  of  its  historic 
development;  and  lastly,  it  accentuates  the  ultimate 
ethical  aims  of  the  movement. 


204  HULL-HOUSE  MAPS   AND   PAPERS. 

The  despair  of  the  labor  movement  is,  as  Mazzini 
said  in  another  cause  long  ago,  that  we  have  torn 
the  great  and  beautiful  ensign  of  Democracy.  Each 
party  has  snatched  a  rag  of  it,  and  parades  it  as 
proudly  as  if  it  were  the  whole  flag,  repudiating  and 
not  deigning  to  look  at  the  others. 

It  is  this  feeling  of  disdain  to  any  class  of  men  or 
kind  of  men  in  the  community  which  is  dangerous  to 
the  labor  movement,  which  makes  it  a  class-measure.  It 
attacks  its  democratic  character,  and  substitutes  party 
enthusiasm  for  the  irresistible  force  of  human  progress. 
The  labor  movement  must  include  all  men  in  its  hopes. 
It  must  have  the  communion  of  universal  fellowship. 
^*  ny  drop  of  gall  within  its  cup  is  fatal.  Any  grudge 
treir^'ured  up  against  a  capitalist,  any  desire  to  "  get 
even  '■  when  the  wealth  has  changed  hands,  are  but  the 
old  expediences  of  human  selfishness.  All  sense  of 
injury  must  fall  aAvay  and  be  absorbed  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  common  brotherhood.  If  to  insist  upon  the 
universality  of  the  best  is  the  function  of  the  settle- 
ment, nowhere  is  its  influence  more  needed  than  in  the 
labor  movement,  where  there  is  constant  temptation 
towards  a  class  warfare. 


APPENDIX. 


Outline  Sketch  descriptive  of  Hull-House. 


LIST   OF 

RESIDENTS   WHO   HAVE   BEEN   IN   RESIDENCE 

FOR   SIX   MONTHS    OR   LONGER. 


Jane  Addams. 
Ellen  G.  Starr. 
Julia  C.  Lathrop. 
Florence  Kelley. 
Mary  A.  Keyzer. 
Anna  M.  Farnsworth.' 
Agnes  Sinclair  Holbrook. 
Josephine  Milligan,  M.D. 
Wilfreda  Brockavay. 
Rose  M.  Gyles. 
Gertrli)e  Barnum. 
Ella  Raymond  Waite. 


Annie  Fryar. 
Josefa  Humpal  Zeman. 
Margaret  M.  West. 
Jeannette  C.  Welch. 1 
ExELLA  Benedict. 
Clifford  W.  Barnes.^ 
Alex.  A.  Bruce.^ 
Edward  L.  Burchard.i 
Henry  B.  Learned. i 
Chas.  C.  Arnold.! 
John  Addams  Linn. 
Edwin  A.  Waldo. 


1  No  longer  in  residence. 

The  settlement,  Jan.  1,  1895,  numbers  twenty,  including  those  who  are  in 
residence  now,  but  have  not  yet  resided  for  six  months. 


f\ 


HULL-HOUSE: 

A  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT. 

The  two  original  residents  of  Hull-House  are  enter- 
ing upon  their  sixth  year  of  settlement  in  the  nineteenth 
ward.  They  publish  this  outline^ that  the  questions  daily 
asked  by  neighbors  and  visitors  may  be  succinctly  an- 
swered. It  necessarily  takes  somewhat  the  character  of 
a  report,  but  is  much  less  formal.  It  aims  not  so  mucli 
to  give  an  account  of  what  has  been  accomplished,  as  to 
suggest  what  may  be  done  by  and  through  a  neighbor- 
hood of  working-people,  when  they  are  touched  by  a 
common  stimulus,  and  possess  an  intellectual  and  social 
centre  about  which  they  may  grofip  their  various  organi- 
zations and  enterprises.  This  centre  or  "  settlement,"  to 
be  effective,  must  contain  an  element  of  permanency,  so 
that  the  neighborhood  may  feel  that  the  interest  and 
fortunes  of  the  residents  are  identical  with  their  own. 
The  settlement  must  have  an  enthusiasm  for  the  possi- 
bilities of  its  locality,  and  an  ability  to  bring  into  it 
and  develop  from  it  those  lines  of  thought  and  action 
which  make  for  the  "  higher  life."  ~ 

The  original  residents  came  to  liiill-I louse  with  a 
conviction  that  social  intercourse  could  best  express 
t-he  growing  sense  of  the  economic  unity  of  society. 
They  wished  the  social  spirit  to  be  the  undercurrent 
of  the  life  of  Hull-House,  whatever  direction  the  stream 

'  Tliis  outline  was  originally  iHsiiud  a.s  a  ii:iiii|iliK't,  Feb.  1, 1893.  It  is  here 
revised  to  Jan.  1,  18U5. 

207 


208      HULL-HOUSE:    A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

might  take.  All  tlie  details  were  left  for  tlie  demands 
of  the  neighborhood  to  determine,  and  each  department 
has  grown  from  a  discovery  made  throngh  natural  and 
reciprocal  social  relations. 

THE    COLLEGE    EXTENSION    COURSES 

grew  thus  from  an  informal  origin.  The  first  class  met 
as  guests  of  the  residents.  As  the  classes  became  larger 
and  more  numerous,  and  the  object  of  the  newcomers 
more  definitely  that  of  acquisition  of  some  special  knowl- 
edge, the  informality  of  the  social  relation  was  nec*essa- 
rily  less ;  but  the  prevailing  attitude  toward  the  house 
of  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  students  now  enrolled  is 
that  of  guests  as  well  as  students.  Many  new  students, 
attracted  and  refreshed  by  the  social  atmosphere,  come 
into  the  classes  who  Avould  not  be  likely  to  undertake 
any  course  of  study  at  an  evening  high  school,  or  any 
school  within  their  reach.  These  students,  the  larger 
proportion  of  whom  are  young  women,  represent  a  great 
variety  of  occupations.  Among  them  are  teachers  in 
the  public  schools,  employees  of  factories  and  shops, 
typewriters  and  cashiers.  The  College  Extension  Course 
aims  not  to  duplicate,  but  to  supplement,  the  advantages 
offered  by  evening  high  schools  and  business  colleges. 
Hence  in  these  classes  the  emphasis  is  laid  upon  the 
humanities,  and  no  attempt  is  made  to  supply  means 
for  earning  a  livelihood.  The  most  popular  and  con- 
tinuous courses  have  been  in  literature,  languages,  music, 
art,  history,  mathematics,  and  drawing.  The  saving- 
grace  of  all  good  things,  and  the  developing  power  of 
the  love  of  them,  have  been  proved  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  residents  of  Hull-House.  A  prospectus  of  the 
College  Extension  classes  is  published  at  the  beginning 
of  each  term  for  ten  weeks. 


APPLWDIA-.  209 

The  College  Extension  classes  are  so  called  because 
the  instriu'tors  are  mostly  college  men  and  women. 
These  classes  were  established  at  Hull-House  before 
the  University  Extension  nujvenuMit  began  in  Chicago, 
and  are  not  connected  with  it.  The  faculty  numbers 
thirty-live,  mostly  college  men  and  women,  sonu^  of 
whom  have  taught  continuously  for  three  years.  Mo 
charge  is  made  for  the  teaching,  which  is  gratuitous 
on  the  part  of  the  faculty ;  but  the  students  })ay  fifty 
cents  a  course,  which  covers  the  printing  of  the  pro- 
spectuses and  other  incidental  expenses.  Any  surplus 
is  expended  upon  lectures  and  reference  books.  Three 
University  Extension  Courses  have  been  given  at  the 
centre  formed  at  Hull-House  —  two  in  the  drawing- 
room  and  one  in  a  neighbcn-ing  church.  The  lecturers 
were  from  the  Universit}^  Extension  Department  of  the 
University  of  Chicago. 

SU."MMKIt    SfHOOL. 

A  helpful  supplement  of  the  College  Extension  Courses 
has  been  the  summer  .school  held  for  three  years  in  the 
buildings  of  Kockford  College,  at  Rockford,  111.  Half 
the  students  were  able  to  attend.  The  sum  of  tliree 
dollars  a  week  paid  by  each  student  for  board,  covered 
the  entire  expenses  of  the  school  —  the  use  of  the  build- 
ings, including  gymnasium  and  laboratories,  having  been 
given  free  of  rent.  Much  time  was  devoted  to  out-door 
work  in  botany  and  the  study  of  birds,  and  the  month 
proved  a  successful  combination  of  a  summer  vacation 
and  a  continuation  of  the  year's  study.  The  esprit  de 
corps,  fostered  by  the  intimacy  of  the  month's  sojourn 
in  college  quarters,  bore  its  first  fruits  in  a  students' 
association  formed  at  the  close  of  the  summer's  tciiu. 


210       HULL-HOUSE:   A    tiOCIAL    tiLTTLEMEyr. 

thp:  studext.s'  associatiox. 

The  Students'  Association,  now  including  a  good  pro- 
portion of  the  attendants  of  the  class,  is  divided  into 
the  literary,  the  dramatic,  and  the  musical  sections. 
The  society  meets  once  a  month,  and  each  section  in 
turn  is  responsible  for  an  evening's  entertainment.  The 
programme  is  followed  by  an  informal  dance  in  the 
gymnasium.  Each  term's  course  is  opened  by  a  stu- 
dents' reception  given  by  the  residents. 

RE  A  D I X  G-RO  O  M. 

A  reading-room  in  the  lower  floor  of  the  Hull-House 
Art  Gallery  was  maintained  by  the  Chicago  Public 
Library  Board  for  three  years,  with  two  city  librarians 
in  charge.  The  room  was  supplied  with  English  and 
foreign  magazines  and  papers,  as  well  as  several  hun- 
dred books.  All  the  books  of  the  Public  Library  are 
accessible  to  the  neighborhood  through  the  excellent 
system  of  sub-station  delivery.  This  library  has  now 
been  moved  to  a  neighboring  block. 

EXHIBITIONS    OF    I'KJTURES. 

Owing  partly  to  the  limited  space  available  for  the 
purpose,  the  picture  exhibits  have  been  necessarily  small. 
An  effort  has  been  made  to  show  only  pictures  which 
combine,  to  a  considerable  degree,  an  elevated  tone  with 
technical  excellence ;  and  at  no  time  can  a  very  large 
assortment  of  such  pictures  be  obtained.  There  is  an 
advantage  on  the  side  of  a  small  exhibition  carefully 
selected,  especially  to  an  untrained  pul)lic.  The  confu- 
sion and  fatigue  of  mind  which  a  person  of  no  trained 
powers  of  selection  suffers  in  passing  his  eyes  wearily 
over  the  assortment  of  good,  bad,  and  indifferent  which 


A}'pt:xi)ix.  211 

the  average  picture  exhibit  presents,  leave  him  nothing 
with  which  to  assimilate  the  good  when  he  finds  it,  and 
his  chances  of  finding  it  are  small.  Frequently  recur- 
ring exhibitions  of  a  few  very  choice  pictures  might  do 
more  toward  educating  the  public  taste  of  the  localitj'^ 
in  which  they  occur  than  many  times  the  number  less 
severely  chosen  and  less  often  seen.  Hull-House  has 
had  two  exhibits  every  year  since  the  gallery  was  built, 
which  were  well  attended.  They  were  omitted  during 
the  World's  Fair,  and  an  effort  was  made  to  supply  their 
place  by  assisting  as  many  people  as  possible  to  see  the 
pictures  of  the  fair  intelligently.  Parties  formed  for 
the  purpose  were  conducted  regularly  by  a  resident. 

The  first  residents  of  Hull- House  held  strongl}*  to  the 
belief  that  any  compromise  in  the  matter  of  excellence 
in  art  was  a  mistake.  They  hung  their  OAvn  walls  only 
with  such  pictures  as  they  felt  were  helpful  to  the  life 
of  mind  and  soul.  Very  much  of  the  influence  of  the 
House  they  believed  to  be  due  to  the  harmony  and 
reasonableness  of  the  message  of  its  walls.  One  of 
the  residents  has  been  much  interested  in  pictures  in  the 
public  schools,  and  has  aroused  sufficient  interest  in  the 
subject  to  result  in  providing  gootl  sets  of  pictures  and 
casts  for  several  schools  in  the  poorest  localities.  With 
the  means  at  her  disposal  she  has  been  able  to  jiut  a 
number  of  good  pictures  into  each  room  of  the  school 
nearest  Hull-House,  and  one  or  more  into  five  of  the 
public  kindergartens.  A  society  has  been  organized  for 
carrying  on  the  work. 

WORKIXii-PKOI'LK's    CHORUS. 

The  same  principles  the  House  is  striving  to  carry 
into  eifect  in  regard  to  the  music  it  provides. 


212       HULL-HOUSE :   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

The  director  of  the  Workl's  Fair  choruses  has  under- 
taken the  training  of  a  chorus  of  five  hundred  working- 
people.  He  believes  that  working-people  especially 
need  the  musical  form  of  expression,  their  lives  being 
shorn  on  the  art  side.  He  further  holds  that  musical 
people  need  for  their  art's  sake  the  sense  of  brother- 
hood ;  that  art  is  hollow  and  conventional  unless  it  is 
the  utterance  of  the  common  and  universal  life. 

SUXDAY    CONCERTS. 

A  free  concert  is  given  in  the  gymnasium  every 
Sunday  afternoon.  The  concerts,  at  first  given  Avith 
the  motive  of  entertaining,  are  now  conducted  with  the 
development  of  musical  taste  and  understanding  as  the 
object  in  view.  This  may  be  illustrated  by  selections 
from  the  programme. 

SUISTDAY   CONCERTS,   .5   P.M. 

BEETHOVEN   CONCERT     .        .         .      Miss.  H.  L.  Frank. 

(Beethoven's  Birtlulay.) 

CHRISTMAS   MUSIC.  —  Songs   and    carols   of   Eleanor   Smith 
Reineke,   Cornelius,  and  others. 
Miss  Eleanor  Smith  axd  the  Seniok  Singing-Class. 

MUSIC.  — From  "Wagner's  Opera  of  "  Lohengrin,"  with 

interpretation      .         .         .      Mi;s.  James  Hunt, 
(In  preparation  for  the  music  Miss  Stark  will  read 
Tennyson's  "  Holy  Grail,"  at  four  o'clock.) 

CONCERT.  —  Choral        .         .        Led  by  Mr.  W.  L.   Tomlins. 
(Solos  and  choruses  from  "  The  Messiah  "  and  "  Elijah.") 

CONCERT.  —  Organ  and  String  Quartette. 

To  be  jriven  at  the  house  of  .Afrs.  .Tohn  C.  Coonley, 
0V!0  Division  Street  (and  Lalce  Shore  Drive),  by 

Mr.  W.  Middelschulte  and  tue  Spiering  Quartette. 


APPENDIX  213 

The  oldest  singing-class  is  now  pursuing  its  third  year 
of  study  under  the  instruction  of  a  composer  and  teacher 
of  vocal  music  who  has  never  com})roniised  her  severe 
musical  standards  here  or  elsewhere.  The  compara- 
tively small  number  of  students  whose  intellect  and  per- 
severance have  survived  the  test  have  had  the  advantage 
of  an  unusual  training. 

THE    PADEREWSKI    CLUB. 

A  club  of  twenty  children,  calling  themselves  the 
Paderewski  Club,  has  had  a  year  of  instruction  on  the 
piano,  together  Avith  Sunday  afternoon  talks  by  their 
teacher  on  the  lives  of  the  great  musicians.  Six  of  the 
most  proficient  have  obtained  scholarships  in  the  Chicago 
Conservatory. 

THE    JAN^E    CLUB. 

The  Jane  Club,  a  co-operative  boarding-club  for 
young  working-women,  had  the  advice  and  assistance 
of  Hull-House  in  its  establishment.  The  original  mem- 
bers of  the  club,  seven  in  number,  were  a  group  of 
trades-union  girls  accustomed  to  organized  and  co-opera- 
tive action.  The  club  has  been  from  the  beginning 
self-governing,  Avithout  a  matron  or  outside  control,  the 
officers  being  elected  by  the  members  from  their  own 
number,  and  serving  for  six  months  gratuitously.  The 
two  offices  of  treasurer  and  steward  have  required  a 
generous  sacrifice  of  their  limited  leisure,  as  well  as 
a  good  deal  of  ability  from  those  holding  them.  Tliis 
being  given,  together  with  a  considerable  esjtrit  de  corjts 
in  the  increasing  number  of  members,  the  club  has 
thriven  brjth  substantially  and  socialh'.  The  weekly 
dues  of  three  dollars,  with  an  occasional  small  assess- 


214       IIULL-UOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

nieiit,  have  met  all  current  expenses  of  rent,  service, 
food,  heat,  and  light,  after  the  furnishing  and  first 
month's  rent  was  supplied  by  Hull-House.  The  club 
now  numbers  fifty  members,  and  the  one  fiat  is  in- 
creased to  five.  The  members  do  such  share  of  the 
housework  as  does  not  interfere  with  their  daily  occupa- 
tions. There  are  various  circles  within  the  club  for 
social  and  intellectual  purposes ;  and  while  the  members 
are  glad  to  procure  the  comforts  of  life  at  a  rate  Avithin 
their  means,  the  atmosphere  of  the  club  is  one  of  com- 
radeship rather  than  thrift.  The  club  holds  a  monthly 
reception  in  the  Hull-House  gymnasium. 

THE    PHALANX    CLUB. 

A  similar  co-operative  club  has  been  started  by  nine 
young  men  at  245  West  Polk  Street,  most  of  the  mem- 
bers of  which  are  members  of  the  Typographical  Union. 
The  club  has  made  a  most  promising  beginning. 

THE    LABOR    MOVEMENT. 

The  connection  of  the  House  with  the  labor  move- 
ment may  be  said  to  have  begun  on  the  same  social 
basis  as  its  other  relations.  Of  its  standing  with  labor 
unions,  which  is  now  "  good  and  regular,"  it  owes  the 
foundation  to  personal  relations  with  the  organizer  of 
the  Bindery  Girls'  Union,  who  lived  for  some  months 
in  the  House  as  a  guest.  It  is  now  generally  understood 
that  Hull-House  is  "  on  the  side  of  unions."  Several  of 
the  women's  unions  have  held  their  regular  meetings  at 
the  House,  two  have  been  organized  there,  and  in  four 
instances  men  and  women  on  strike  against  reduction  in 
wau'es  met  there  while  the  strike  lasted.     In  one  case  a 


APPENDIX.  215 

strike  was  successfully  arbitrated  by  the  House.  It  is 
most  interesting  to  note  that  a  numl)er  of  small  and. 
feeble  unions  have,  from  the  very  fact  of  their  weakness, 
V)een  compelled  to  a  policy  which  has  been  their  strength, 
and  has  made  for  the  strength  of  their  cause.  In  this 
policy  it  has  been  the  privilege  of  Hull-House  to  be  of 
service  to  them.  The  stronger  unions,  such  as  the  car- 
penters' and  bricklayers',  trusting  in  their  own  strength 
and  the  skill  of  their  members,  have  too  often  adopted  a 
course  of  exclusiveness  and  self-centred  effort.  The  weak 
ones,  as  those  in  the  clothing  trades,  finding  it  impos- 
sible to  accomplish  much  alone,  betook  themselves  to  the 
constant  urging  of  concerted  action.  The  most  impor- 
tant illustration  of  this  highly  useful  policy  is  in  the 
action  of  the  unions  in  urging  the  factory  inspection  law 
passed  by  the  Legislature  of  Illinois  during  the  spring  of 
1893.  The  initiative  toward  the  introduction  of  the 
measure  in  the  legislature  was  taken  by  a  resident  of 
Hull-House  ;  and  a  Committee  of  Investigation  sent  from 
Springfield  to  inspect  sweat-shops,  and  decide  upon  the 
necessity  for  legislation,  was  piloted  by  her  upon  its 
tour.  The  same  resident,  who  was  at  that  time  conduct- 
ing in  Chicago  a  so-called  "  slum  investigation  "  for  the 
Department  of  Labor  at  Washington,  was,  after  the  pas- 
sage of  the  law,  appointed  inspector  of  factories  in  the 
State  of  Illinois.  The  work  of  the  inspector  and  her 
assistants  and  deputies  can  be  found  iu  the  annual  report 
of  the  Illinois  State  Factorj"^  Inspector,  the  first  of  which 
has  alreaxly  been  issued. 

Hull-House  is  situated  in  the  midst  of  the  sweat-shop 
district  of  Chicago,  and  it  was  natural  that  the  first 
effort  of  the  House  to  procure  legislation  against  an 
industrial  evil  should  have  been  directed  against  the 
sweating-svstem. 


216       HULL-HOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

A  "^vard  book  has  been  kept  by  the  residents  for  two 
years  in  -which  have  been  noted  matters  of  sociological 
interest  found  in  the  ward.  Many  instances  of  the  sweat- 
ing-evil and  child-labor  have  been  recorded,  as  well  as 
unsanitary  tenements  and  instances  of  eviction. 

EIGHT-HOUR    CLUB. 

After  the  passage  of  the  factory  and  workshop  bill, 
which  includes  a  clause  limiting  women's  labor  to  eight 
hours  a  day,  the  young  women  employees  in  a  large  fac- 
tory in  the  near  neighborhood  of  Hull-House  formed  an 
eight-hour  club  for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  w^omen 
in  factories  and  workshops  to  obey  the  eight-hour  law. 
This  club  has  maintained  its  position,  and  done  good 
missionary  Avork  for  the  cause.  They  have  developed 
a  strong  sense  of  obligation  toward  employees  in  shops 
where  the  wages  are  low,  and  the  employees  much  less 
favored  than  themselves.  Their  enthusiasm  has  carried 
them  across  a  caste  line.  This  club  meets  at  Hull- 
House,  and  makes  full  use  of  the  social  factor  so  essen- 
tial in  fusing  heterogeneous  elements. 

THE    WORKIXGt— people's    SOCIAL    SCIENCE    CLUB 

was  formed  during  the  first  year  of  residence  at  Hull- 
House,  and  has  met  weekly  ever  since,  Avith  the  excep- 
tion of  the  two  summer  months.  In  the  summer  of 
1893,  however,  owing  to  the  number  of  interesting 
speakers  to  be  secured  from  the  World's  Fair  Con- 
gresses, the  chib  met  without  interruption.  The  pur- 
pose of  the  club  is  the  discussion  of  social  and  economic 
topics.  An  opening  address  of  forty-five  minutes  is  fol- 
lowed by  an  hour  of  discussion.     The  speakers  in  the 


ArPKNDIX.  217 

latter  represent  every  possible  shade  of  social  and 
economic  view.  Working  men  and  women  are  in  the 
majority,  although  professional  and  business  men  are 
to  be  found  at  every  meeting.  The  attendance  averages 
seventy-five;  the  discussion  is  always  animated  and  out- 
spoken. The  residents  believe  that  one  of  the  offices  of 
the  settlement  is  to  provide  that  people  of  various  creeds 
and  class  traditions  should  meet  under  a  friendly  and 
non-partisan  roof,  and  discuss  differences  fairly.  Fol- 
lowing is  a  list  of  ten  speakers  and  their  subjects, 
selected  from  the  programme  of  1893  : 

"THE  ENGLISH   LABOR   MOVEMENT." 
Mr.  Wm.  Clauke. 

"WOMAN'S   SUFFRAGE." 
Miss  Susax  B.  Aktiioxy. 

"THE  ECONOMIC  AND  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS  OF  INDIA." 

SWAMI    Vl%'EHANANDE. 

"THE   UNEMPLOYED." 
Dk.  Cuarles  II.  Henderson. 

"THE   LONDON   COUNTY   COUNCIL." 
Mr.  Percy  Alden. 

"THE   NEW   TRADES-UNIONISM." 
Mrs.  Kobt.  A.  Wood. 

"  CHARITY   ORGANIZATION." 
Dr.  Seth  Low. 

"THE   NEIGHBORHOOD   GUILD." 
Dr.  Stanton  Coit. 

"THE   CONSCIENCE   OF  THE   STATE." 
Dr.  B.\.yard  Holmes. 

"THE   CHICAGO   CITY   COUNCIL." 

Mit.  Wm.  T.  Stead. 


218       HULL-HOUSE:    A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

The  programme  for  the  fall  of  1894  is  possibly  more 

typical :  — 

"  SOCRATES." 
Pkof.  Charles  F.  Bkadley,  Northwestern  University. 

"EPICTETUS." 
Dr.  Joh:n  Dewey,  University  of  Chicago. 

"MARCUS  AURELIUS." 

Prof.  J.  H.  Tufts,  University  of  Chicago. 

"ST.   FRANCIS." 
Miss  Eliza  Allen  Star. 

"SAVONAROLA." 
Rev.  F.  W.  Gu>.saulus,  D.D. 

"  SIR  THOMAS  MORE." 

Mr.  Charles  Zeuijlin,  University  of  Chicago. 

The  Arnold  Toynbee  Club  meets  at  Hull-House. 

The  objects  of  the  club  are  :  1.  To  offer  lectures  upon 
economic  subjects.  2.  To  ascertain  and  make  known 
facts  of  interest  to  working-people  in  the  fields  of  eco- 
nomics and  legislation.  3.  To  promote  legislation  for 
economic  and  social  reform,  especially  to  secure  greater 
public  control  over  natural  monopolies.  Membership  is 
by  invitation.  Members  of  the  club  offer  a  list  of  free 
lectures  on  economic  and  social  questions.  It  is  espe- 
cially desired  to  aid  in  the  educational  work  of  trades' 
unions  and  young  people's  societies. 

THE    CHICAGO    QUESTION    CLUB 

meets  in  the  Hull-House  Art  Gallery  at  two  o'clock 
every  Sunday  afternoon.  The  club  was  fully  formed  be- 
fore it  asked  for  the  hospitality  of  Hull-House.  It 
.is  well  organized,  and  each  meeting  is  opened  by  presen- 
tation of  two  sides  of  a  question.     Occasionally  the  vari- 


APPEyhix.  210 

ous  economic  clubs  meet  for  a  common  disciission.  One 
of  the  most  successful  was  led  by  Father  Huntington, 
on  the  subject,  "  Can  a  Freethinker  believe  in  Christ  ?" 
An  audience  of  four  hundred  ])eople  followed  closely 
the  two  hours'  discussion,  which  was  closed  by  Mr. 
Henry  George. 

THE    NINETEENTH    WARD    IMPROVEMENT    CLUB. 

The  Nineteenth  "Ward  Improvement  Club  meets  at 
Hull-House  the  second  Saturday  evening  of  each  month. 
The  president  is  the  district  representative  in  the  Illi- 
nois State  Legislature,  and  one  of  the  ward  aldermen 
is  an  active  member.  The  club  is  pledged  to  the  im- 
provement of  its  ward  in  all  directions.  It  has  stand- 
ing-committees on  street-(,'leaning,  etc.,  and  was  much 
interested  in  the  efforts  of  the  Municipal  Order  League 
to  secure  public  baths.  Through  the  solicitation  of  the 
league  the  City  Council  in  1892  made  an  appropria- 
tion of  $12,000  for  public  baths.  Hull-House  was  able 
to  offer  the  use  of  a  lot  Avhich  had  been  given  it  by  the 
owner  rent  free  for  two  years.  He  transferred  the  lease 
to  the  city,  with  a  satisfactory  arrangement  for  its  sale 
at  the  expiration  of  the  lease,  and  a  free  public  bath- 
house has  been  erected  upon  it,  which  is  now  in  daily 
use.  It  contains  seventeen  shower-baths,  a  swimming- 
tank,  and  a  tub.  The  Nineteenth  Ward  Improvement 
Club  has  formed  a  co-operative  association,  the  first 
officers  of  which  are  the  same  as  its  own.  It  has 
opened  a  co-operative  coalyard  near  Hull-House.  The 
purchaser  of  a  ton  of  coal  becomes  a  member  of  the 
Co-operative  Association.  At  its  first  meeting  the 
members  voted  that  their  dividends  be  employed  in 
establishing  a  bushel  trade  to  meet  the  wants   of  the 


220       nULL-IIOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

pool'  people  of  the  neigliborliood.  The  purchaser  of 
eaeli  bushel  receives  a  ticket,  six  of  which  entitle  him 
to  a  rebate  in  coal.  The  association  hopes  in  time  to 
deal  in  other  commodities. 

CIVIC    FEDERATIOX    WARD    COUXCIL. 

In  the  fall  of  1894  a  ward  council  of  the  Civic  Fede- 
ration was  organized  at  Hull-House  for  the  nineteenth 
ward.  The  active  members  of  the  Nineteenth  Ward 
Improvement  ("lub  are  naturally  working  together  under 
this  new  name. 

A  full  set  of  committees  have  been  organized  — 
Municipal,  Philanthropic,  Industrial,  Educational,  Politi- 
cal, and  Moral. 

THE    HULL-HOUSE    WOMEN's    CLUB, 

which  now  numbers  ninety  of  the  most  able  women  in 
the  ward,  developed  from  a  social  meeting  for  purposes 
of  tea-drinking  and  friendly  chat.  Several  members 
of  this  club  have  done  good  work  in  street  and  alley 
inspecting  through  the  Municipal  Order  League.  The, 
club  has  also  presented  to  a  public  school  in  the  neigh- 
borhood a  fine  autotype  of  Millet's  Knitting  Shepherd- 
ess, and  hopes  to  do  more  in  future  for  the  art-in-schools 
movement.  They  have  been  active  in  the  visiting  and 
relief  work  which  has  taken  so  large  a  share  of  the  en- 
ergies of  the  settlement  during  the  hard  times.  One 
winter  they  purchased  a  ticket  to  the  lectures  given  to 
mothers  in  the  Kindergarten  College.  One  member 
attended  each  week,  and  reported  to  the  club.  They  are 
in  touch  with  some  of  the  vigorous  movements  of  the 
city,  and  have  frequent  lectures  on  philanthropic  and 
reform  questions. 


APPENDIX.  221 

A    UKCKPTION     Kt)K    (JKKMAXS 

has  been  held  every  Friday  evening  in  Hull-House  for 
four  years.  Two  hours  are  spent  in  singing,  reading, 
games,  etc.,  and  the  habituees  have  all  the  comradeship 
of  a  club.  They  give  an  occasional  coffee-drinking  and 
entertainment.  They  are  a  good  illustration  of  the  social 
feeling  too  often  wasted  in  a  cramped  neighborhood  for 
lack  of  space  and  encouragenuMit. 

During  the  first  two  years  of  Hull-House  the  r(>si- 
dents  held  receptions  for  Italians  each  week,  which 
were  largely  attended.  These  were  for  a  time  discon- 
tinued, as  their  success  depended  mainly  upon  an  Italian 
philanthropist,  who  has  since  started  an  agricultural  col- 
ony in  Alabama.  Immigration  societies,  such  as  are 
successfully  operated  in  London,  are  needed  properly 
to  place  the  Italian  immigrants,  who  might  do  as  much 
for  the  development  of  the  Southern  States  as  they  have 
done  for  South  America.  Hull-House  has  not  been  able 
to  inaugurate  such  a  society,  but  sincerely  hopes  that 
one  may  be  formed,  as  well  as  an  association  for  im- 
proving tenement  houses,  those  occupied  by  the  Italians 
being  overcrowded  and  unsanitary. 

CJIILDREN's    CLU15S. 

Since  its  foundation,  Hull-House  has  had  numerous 
classes  and  clubs  for  children.  The  fortunes  and  value 
of  the  clubs  have  varied,  depending  very  much  upon  the 
spirit  of  the  leaders.  An  effort  has  always  been  made 
to  avoid  the  school  atmosphere.  The  children  are  re- 
ceived and  trusted  as  guests,  and  the  initiative  and 
control  have  come  from  them  as  far  as  possible.  Their 
favorite  occupation  is  listening  to  stories.  One  club  has 
had  a  consecutive  course  of  legends  and  tales  of  chiv- 


222       HULL-HOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

airy.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  more  imaginative 
children  learn  to  look  upon  the  house  as  a  gateway  into 
a  magic  land,  and  get  a  genuine  taste  of  the  delights 
of  literature.  One  boy,  after  a  winter  of  Charlemagne 
stories,  flung  himself,  half-crying,  from  the  house,  and 
said  that  "  there  was  no  good  in  coming  any  more  now 
that  Prince  Eoland  was  dead."  The  boys'  clubs  meet 
every  Tuesday  afternoon  at  four  o'clock,  and  clubs  of 
little  girls  come  on  Friday.  The  latter  are  the  School- 
girls' Club  and  the  Pansy  Club,  the  Story-Telling  Club 
and  the  Kindergarten  Club.  They  sew,  paint,  or  make 
paper  chains  during  the  story-telling,  and  play  games 
in  the  gymnasium  together  before  they  go  home  at  live 
o'clock.  A  club  of  Bohemian  girls,  called  ''  Libuse," 
meets  every  Monday,  and  studies  the  heroic  women  in 
history.  The  little  children  meet  one  afternoon  in  the 
Aveek  for  advanced  kindergarten  work.  There  are  vari- 
ous children's  classes  for  gymnastics  and  dancing ;  and 
two  children's  choruses,  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  each, 
meet  weekly  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  William  Tom- 
lins.  Dinners  are  served  to  school-children  upon  pres- 
entation of  tickets  which  have  been  sold  to  their 
mothers  for  five  cents  each.  Those  children  are  first 
selected  whose  mothers  are  necessarily  at  work  during 
the  middle  of  the  day ;  and  the  dinner  started  with  chil- 
dren formerly  in  the  Hull-House  creche.  While  it  is 
desired  to  give  the  children  nutritious  food,  the  little 
diners  care  much  more  for  the  toys  and  books  and  the 
general  good  time  than  they  do  for  the  dinners.  It  has 
been  found,  too,  that  the  general  attractiveness  performs 
the  function  of  the  truant-officer  in  keeping  them  at 
school ;  for  no  school  implies  no  dinner.  The  House  has 
had  the  sympathetic  and  enthusiastic  co-operation  of  the 
principal  of  the  Polk  Street  public  school. 


APPENDIX.  223 

SAVIXGS-BAXK. 

A  branch  of  the  New  York  Penny  Provident  Savings- 
Bank  has  been  sustained  for  two  years.  There  are  six 
hundred  depositors. 

SEWIXft-.SCIIOOL. 

One  hundred  and  twenty  Italian  girls  meet  every 
j\[onday  afternoon  in  the  gymnasium,  directed  by  a  su- 
perintendent and  fifteen  teachers.  The  children  make 
garments,  which  they  may  purchase  for  the  price  of  the 
material.  An  effort  is  made  to  follow  up  each  new 
garment  with  lessons  in  tidiness.  There  are  smaller 
classes  in  darning,  knitting,  and  simple  embroidery 
among  the  English-speaking  little  girls. 

COOKIXG— CLASSES. 

Three  cooking-classes  for  adidts  are  held  each  week. 
The  cooking-class  for  Italian  girls  has  been  very  grati- 
fying in  its  results.  There  is  also  a  cooking-class  every 
week  for  American  children,  and  a  nature  class,  which 
meets  every  Saturday  morning.  The  young  members 
are  very  happy  when  the  weather  permits  them  to  go 
with  their  teacher  to  the  park  in  pursuit  of  their  sub- 
ject. When  it  does  not,  they  are  most  content  with  the 
simple  microscopes  at  their  disposal. 

SUMMER    EXCURSIONS. 

A  systematic  effort  is  made  during  the  summer  to 
have  each  of  the  four  hundred  children  connected  with 
the  clubs  spend  at  least  one  day  in  the  countr}^  or  parks. 
Excursions  in  small  groups  are  more  satisfactory  than 
the  time-honored  picnic  method.  Each  summer  from 
fifty  to  a  hundred  children  are  sent  from   Hull-House 


224       nULL-nOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

to  the  fresli-air  homes  and  country-houses.  The  resi- 
dents Avere  able,  through  the  generosity  of  "World's  Fair 
enthusiasts,  to  assist  fifteen  hundred  children  to  see  the 
fair. 

PLAYGROUXD. 

During  the  last  ye-dv  the  use  of  a  piece  of  ground 
near  ^Hull-House  measuring  326  X  119  was  given  rent 
free  for  a  year,  and  in  case  it  should  not  be  sold  in  the 
meantime,  for  a  longer  period.  The  owner  permitted  the 
houses  upon  it,  which  were  in  bad  sanitary  condition,  to 
be  torn  down ;  the  ground  was  graded,  fenced,  provided 
with  swings  and  other  enticing  apparatus,  an  officer  Avas 
supplied  from  the  city  force,  and  a  playground  was 
thrown  open  to  the  juvenile  public.  Through  the  sum- 
mer evenings  many  parents  came  with  their  children. 
Several  of  the  residents  spent  much  time  there  teaching 
the  children  games,  and  regulating  the  use  of  the  fifty 
buckets  and  shovels  which  were  active  in  the  sand-piles. 
The  music  furnished  by  an  organ-grinder  every  after- 
noon often  brought  forth  an  Italian  tarantella  or  an 
Irish  jig  with  curious  spontaneity. 

FREE    KIXDERGARTEX    AND    DAY    NURSERY. 

From  the  first  month  of  its  existence  Hull-House 
has  had  a  free  kindergarten,  and  for  three  years  a  day 
nursery,  where  mothers  who  are  obliged  to  work  leave 
their  children  for  the  day,  paying  five  cents  for  each 
child.  The  creche  averages  in  summer  fifty  children, 
and  in  winter  between  thirty  and  forty.  A  friend  of 
the  House,  who  makes  herself  responsible  for  the  finan- 
cial support  of  the  creche,  gives  largely  of  her  time  in 
directing  and  assisting  in  the  work.  This  nursery  is 
like  others  in  most  respects,  differing  chiefly,  perhaps, 


APPENDIX.  225 

in  the  attention  paid  to  the  matter  of  pictures  and  casts. 
The  Madonnas  of  Raphael,  in  the  best  and  largest  pho- 
tographs, are  hung  low,  that  the  children  may  see  them, 
as  well  as  casts  from  Donatello  and  Delia  llobbia.  The 
children  talk  in  a  familiar  Avay  to  the  babies  on  the  wall, 
and  sometimes  climb  upon  the  chairs  to  kiss  them. 
Surel}'  nuu'h  is  gained  if  one  can  begin  in  a  very  little 
child  to  make  a  truly  beautiful  thing  truly  beloved.  An 
experienced  kindergartner  is  in.  charge  of  the  nursery. 
She  has  the  constant  assistance  of  two  women. 

GYMNASIUM. 

The  last  building  added  to  the  equipment  of  Hull- 
House  includes  a  public  coffee  and  lunch  room,  a  New 
England  kitchen,  a  gymnasium,  with  shower-baths,  and 
men's  club-room,  supplied  with  billiard  and  card  tables. 
The  use  of  the  gymnasium  is  divided  between  men  and 
women,  girls  and  boys,  at  different  hours.  The  evening 
hours  are  reserved  more  especially  for  men.  The  gym- 
nasium, being  now  the  largest  room  in  the  possession  of 
the  settlement,  is  necessarily  used  on  certain  evenings 
as  an  audience  room,  and  as  a  reception  and  ball  room 
by  the  various  clul)S. 

THE    HULL-HOUSE    MEn's    CLUB 

holds  a  reception  there  once  a  month,  and  an  occasional 
banquet.  This  club,  which  rents  a  room  in  the  front 
of  the  building,  is  composed  of  one  hundred  and  iifty  of 
the  abler  citizens  and  more  enterprising  young  men 
of  the  vicinity.  Their  constitution  commits  them,  among 
other  things,  to  the  "  cultivation  of  sobriety  and  good- 
fellowship."'  They  are  not  without  political  influence  in 
the  ward,  and  are  a  distinct  factor  in  its  social  life,  as 
all  of  their  social  undertakings   have  been  reinarkably 


226      HULL-HOUSE:  A    SOCIAL   SETTLEMENT. 

spirited  and  successful.  They  are  in  sympathy  with 
the  aims  of  Hull-House,  and  are  prompt  to  assist  and 
promote  any  of  its  undertakings.  Business  meetings 
are  held  on  the  first  and  third  Friday  evenings  of  each 
month,  and  on  alternate  evenings  the  Literary  and  De- 
bating Sections  hold  meetings. 

HULL-HOUSE    MANDOLUST    CLUB 

consists  of  twelve  members  of  the  Men's  Club,  who 
have  successfully  sustained  an  orchestra  of  mandolin 
and  guitars  for  a  year.  They  are  most  generous  with 
their  services  to  the  entertainments  of  the  House. 

YOUNG    people's    CLUBS. 

The  Lincoln  Club  is  a  debating-society  of  young  men, 
whose  occasional  public  debates  are  always  heard  by  a 
large  and  enthusiastic  audience.  In  their  weekly  meet- 
ing they  have  a  carefully  prepared  debate,  usually  upon 
current  political  events.  They  meet  once  a  month  with 
the  Hull-House  Social  Club.  This  is  composed  of  young 
women  of  the  neighborhood,  many  of  whom  have  met 
every  week  for  four  years.  Their  programmes  are  liter- 
ary and  social.  They  give  an  occasional  play.  The  last 
one  presented  was  the  court  scene  from  the  "  Merchant 
of  Venice." 

Among  the  other  clubs  of  young  people,  the  Young 
Citizens  boasts  the  oldest  club-life.  Their  programmes 
alternate  between  discussions  and  readings.  An  effort 
is  made  in  both  for  civic  and  municipal  education. 

The  Anfreda  Club  of  thirty  young  girls  meets  the 
same  evening.  After  the  literary  programme  is  con- 
cluded, the  two  clubs  have  half  an  hour  of  dancing  or 
games  together  before  going  home. 


APPEXDIX.  227 

Henvy  Learned  Club,  JIull-llouse  Glee  ("Inl),  Jolly 
Boys'  Club,  Good-Fellowsliip  Club,  Lexington  Club,  Bo- 
hemian Garnet  Club,  Longfellow  Club,  Laurel  Club, 
Harrison  Club,  and  others,  are  composed  of  }'oung  i)eo- 
ple  from  fourteen  to  twenty-five  years  of  age.  Alumni 
associations  of  the  neighl)oring  public  schools  hold  their 
meetings  at  the  House.  An  eflort  is  being  made  toward 
school  extension. 

THE    HULL-HOUSE    COFFEE-HOUSE   AND    KITCHEN-. 

The  Hull-House  coffee-house  was  opened  July  1,1893. 
The  room  itself  is  an  attractive  copy  of  an  English  inn, 
with  low,  dark  rafters,  diamond  windows,  and  large 
fireplace.  It  is  open  every  day  from  six  in  the  morning 
to  ten  at  night.  An  effort  has  been  made  to  combine 
the  convenience  of  a  lunch-room,  where  well-cooked  food 
can  be  sold  at  a  reasoiuible  rate,  Avith  cosiness  and  at- 
tractiveness. The  residents  believe  that  substitution  is 
the  only  remedy  against  the  evils  of  the  saloon.  The 
large  kitchen  has  been  carefully  equipped,  under  the 
direction  of  Mrs.  Ellen  Richards,  Avith  a  New  England 
kitchen  outfit,  including  a  number  of  Aladdin  ovens. 
The  foods  are  carefully  prejiared,  a"nd  are  sold  by  the 
quart  or  pound^"to  families  for  home  consumption.  Cof- 
fee, soups,  and  stews  are  delivered  every  day  at  noon 
to  the  neighboring  factories.  By  means  of  an  indurated 
fibre  can,  it  is  ])ossible  to  transport  and  serve  the  food 
hot.  The  employees  purchase  a  pint  of  soup  or  coffee 
with  two  rolls  for  five  cents,  and  the  plan  of 

NOON    FACTORY  ■  DELIVKKV 

is  daily  growing  in  popularity.     The  kitclien  during  the 
winter  of  1893-1894  supplied  hot  lunches  at  ten  cents 


228       IIULL-IIOUSE :   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEyiEyT. 

each  to  the  two  hundred  women  employed  in  the  sewing- 
room  established  by  the  Emergency  Committee  of  the 
Chicago  Women's  Club.  This  room  supplied  work  to 
unemployed  women  during  the  stress  of  the  last  winter. 
Hull-House  has  also  superintended  a  temporary  lodging- 
house  for  the  use  of  unemployed  women  for  some 
months. 

A  physician  is  in  residence  at  Hull-House,  and 
another  who  lives  near  is  most  constant  and  generous 
with  her  professional  services.  A  nurse  of  the  Visiting 
Nurses'  Association  has  her  headquarters,  and  receives 
her  orders,  at  the  House. 

A     PUBLIC    DISPENSARY 

was  undertaken  in  1893.  It  is  open  every  day  from 
three  until  four,  and  every  evening  from  seven  to  eight 
o'clock.  A  small  charge  is  made  when  possible  for 
drugs.     In  the  same  house,  247  Polk  Street,  is  the 

HULL-HOUSE    LABOR    BUREAU, 

necessarily  small  at  present  from  the  extreme  difficulty 
of  finding  work  for  men  or  women.  Hull-House  has 
always  undertaken  a  certain  amount  of  relief  work, 
the  records  of  which  are  kept  with  those  of  the  Labor 
Bureau.  One  of  the  residents  served  for  a  winter  as  a 
visitor  oil  the  Cook  County  staff,  all  the  cases  of  desti- 
tution within  a  certain  radius  of  Hull-House  being  given 
to  her  for  investigation.  8he  also  has  established  and 
maintained  with  all  the  charitable  institutions  of  the 
city  a  cordial  and  sympathetic  relationship,  which  has 
been  most  valuable  to  the  neighborhood.  She  has  more 
recently  been  appointed  a  meml)er  of  the  State  Board  of 


API'ESDIX.  220 

Charities,  The  House  has  been  active  in  the  movement 
to  organize  the  charities  of  Chicago,  and  lias  recently 
united  its  relief  office  with  the  ward  office  established 
by  the  new  organization. 

RESIDENTS. 

No  university  or  college  qualification  has  ever  been 
made  for  residence,  although  the  majority  of  residents 
have  been  college  people.  The  organization  of  the  set- 
tlement has  been  extremely  informal  ;  but  an  attempt 
has  been  made  during  the  last  winter  to  limit  the  num- 
ber of  residents  to  twenty.  The  household,  augmented 
by  visitors,  has  occasionally  exceeded  that  number.  Ap- 
plicants for  residence  are  received  for  six  weeks,  during 
which  time  they  have  all  privileges,  save  a  vote,  at  resi- 
dents' meeting.  At  the  end  of  that  period,  if  they  have 
proved  valuable  to  the  work  of  the  House,  they  are  in- 
vited to  remain,  if  it  is  probable  that  they  can  be  in 
residence  for  six  months.  The  expenses  of  the  resi- 
dents are  defrayed  by  themselves  on  the  plan  of  a  co- 
operative club  under  the  direction  of  a  house  committee. 
A  limited  number  of  fellowships  has  been  established, 
one  of  them  by  the  Chicago  branch  of  the  Inter-Col- 
legiate Alumnae  Association. 

All  the  residents  of  Hull-House  for  the  first  three 
years  were  women,  though  much  valuable  work  has 
always  been  done  by  non-resident  men.  During  the 
last  year  men  have  come  into  residence  in  a  cottage  on 
Polk  Street,  dining  at  Hull-House,  and  giving  such  part 
of  their  time  to  the  work  of  the  settlement  as  is  consis- 
tent with  their  professional  or  business  life. 

It  is  estimated  that  two  thousand  people  come  to  Hull- 
House  each  week,  either  as  members  of  clubs  or  organi- 


230       HULL-HOUSE:   A    SOCIAL    SETTLEMENT. 

zations,  or  as  parts  of  an  audience.  One  hundred  of 
these  come  as  teachers,  lecturers,  or  directors  of  clubs. 
The  house  has  always  had  much  valuable  assistance 
from  the  citizens  of  Chicago.  This  voluntary  response 
to  its  needs  perhaps  accounts  for  the  fact  that  it  has 
never  found  it  necessary  to  form  an  association  with 
chapters  in  colleges,  as  other  settlements  have  done, 

FIXAXCES. 

Hull-House  and  the  adjacent  lots  are  given  by  the 
owner  rent  free  until  1920.  Two  buildings  have  beeu 
built  upon  these  by  friends  of  the  House.  Three  other 
buildings  are  to  be  erected  in  1895.  One  is  an  addition 
to  the  coffee-house,  a  second  is  designed  for  general  class 
and  audience  rooms,  while  the  third  is  to  be  known  as 
the  children's  house.  The  superintendence  and  teach- 
ing of  the  settlement  are  volunteered  by  residents  and 
others,  and  are  unpaid.  The  running  expenses  of  the 
settlement  proper  are  therefore  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
Large  sums  are  constantly  needed,  however,  for  the 
initiation  of  new  departments  and  the  expenses  of  those 
branches,  such  as  the  nursery,  which  can  never  be  self- 
supporting.  These  are  constantly  defrayed  by  generous 
friends  of  the  House,  many  of  whom  are  active  in  its 
service. 


LIBRARY  OF 
ECOiNOAlICS  AND  POLITICS. 

EDITED  BY 
RICHARD  T.   ELY,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 


Number    Five. 


CroincU's  Hiirarg 

OF 

lEconomics    anti    politics. 


Vol.    I.     The    Independent    Treasury   System    of   the 

United  States $1.50 

By  DAVID  KIN  LEY,  Ph.D.,  of  the  University  of  Illinois. 

Vol.    II.     Repudiation  of    State    Debts  in  the   United 
States $1.50 

By  WILLIAM  A.  SCOTT,  Assistant  Professor  of  Po- 
litical Economy  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 

Vol.   III.     Socialisnn   and  Social    Reform     .     .     $1.50 

By  RICHARD  T.  ELY,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
Political  Economy,  and  Director  of  the  School  of 
Econonnics,  Political  Science,  and  History  in  the 
University  of  Wisconsin. 

Vol.   IV.     American  Charities.     A  Study  in  Philanthro- 
py and  Economics $1.75. 

By  AMOS  G.  WARNER,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Eco- 
nonnics and  Social  Science  in  the  Leiand  Stan- 
ford, Jr.,  University. 

Vol.  V.     Hull-House  Maps  and   Papers. 

By  RESIDENTS  OF  HULL-HOUSE,   Chicago,    III. 
Illustrated  with  Colored  Maps.     8vo       .      .     $2.50 
Special  Edition  with  Maps  mounted  on  Cloth. 
8vo $3.50 


